Academic research confirmed - game addiction cannot be treated as a mental disorder

A joint study by Oxford and Cardiff Universities has shown that video game addiction is not an accurate diagnosis of psychophysical illness.

According to the eleventh International Classification of Diseases, playing video game addiction is a mental disorder. The doctoral profession may not officially diagnose this for you until 2022, but for some time clinics have been opened for treatment from the so-called. "Gaming disordera". One such is open in our country. It is, of course, an attempt to make money on a problem that is more and more noticeable in young people, but a problem whose cause is not solely and exclusively video games.

It confirms this research, which was carried out with the cooperation of the Universities of Oxford and Cardiff. The study, entitled “Investigating the Motivational and Psychosocial Dynamics of Dysregulated Gaming,” was conducted on a sample of 1,000 adolescents and their caregivers from England, Scotland and Wales. The research results indicate that there is no evidence of a direct connection between video games and behavior problems.

“Variations in the experience of playing are more likely to be related to the fulfillment of adolescents' psychological needs for competition, autonomy and belonging, and to the existence of broader functioning problems. According to the findings, we do not believe there is sufficient evidence to treat addiction to gaming as a separate clinical disorder, ”says Professor Andrew Przybylski of the Oxford Institute of Internet.

This conclusion is in the wake of what some medical profession warned when gaming addiction was declared a disorder. At the time, one could hear the argument that people most commonly use video games to cope with disorders such as depression or anxiety, and in this case game addiction is not a true diagnosis because it neglects the underlying problem - the question of what causes depression in a sick person at all. According to some opinions, stigmatization videogames such problems could be even deeper.