When the girl was confronted about her obsession, she lashed out at her father, but when she realized she couldn’t do anything to intimidate them she confessed that she had been staying up at night till 5 am when they were asleep. She also admitted to using her father’s credit card to purchase extras to boost her performance.
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The parents felt the last resort was to put her into therapy. After consulting an addiction counselor, and private psychotherapy sessions were arranged for her. Thankfully she is now slowly getting her life back on track. But this is one girl; experts feel that there are thousands of children out there suffering similar if not worse addictions because of overexposure to violent and addictive video games.
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The World Health Organization or WHO has issued a statement on their website outlining the problem as gaming disorder. ‘Gaming' is defined as 'a pattern of gaming behavior characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.'
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WHO also outlines the requirements for diagnosing gaming disorder defining a victim as one who had been gaming for a year and experiencing impairment in various functions of family and social life including dysfunctional behavior in education, society and occupation?
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WHO advises that people gaming should be mindful about their hours of gaming and that it should not impact daily activity. Gamers should also be alert to their own psychological and physical changes where health and social behavior is concerned. Negative changes are due to the adverse effects of gaming obsession.
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