THE World Health Organisation (WHO) might classify “gaming disorder” as a mental health condition in its manual on diseases next year, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.

In the beta draft of WHO’s 11th update of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), “gaming disorder” has been included in the category of “mental, behavioural or neurodevelopmental disorders”.

To warrant a diagnosis of such a disorder, according to the draft, one would have “impaired control over gaming”, give “increasing priority to gaming, to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities”, and continue gaming “despite the occurrence of negative consequences”.

It said such a behavioural pattern was of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational and other important areas of functioning.

The ICD is used by health professionals globally, and serves as an international standard for defining health conditions and diseases.

Sudden deaths and physical symptoms linked to online gaming have been on the rise in recent years.

In 2014, a 27-year-old Chinese woman suffered sudden death after playing video games for more than 10 hours straight.

The following year, a 17-year-old Russian was sent to the emergency room and died in hospital after falling into a coma while he was playing video games.

He was reported to have played almost continuously for 22 days, stopping only to sleep and eat. – Bernama, December 27, 2017.