Gaming Disorder FAQ

For several years, I have provided information on Gaming Disorder and challenged misinformation using the power of data analysis. Due to the complex nature of Gaming Disorder, questions and concerns understandably remain.

For this short article, I have crowd-sourced questions and concerns that people have regarding Gaming Disorder. It is my hope that peoples’ queries can be answered by someone who is experienced in research and in mental health systems. While I do not directly deliver treatment to clients, I have extensive knowledge of the mental health and treatment systems where I live after working on a published audit. My knowledge comes directly from mental health workers and reading treatment notes – more on this later.

With this experience in mind, it’s time to answer some questions.

Contents

1. 1. Gaming Disorder vs Gambling Addiction
   2. Gaming Disorder and The Media
   3. Gaming Disorder Symptoms
   4. Gaming Disorder = Depression?
   5. Gaming Disorder and Disability Welfare

What makes Gaming Disorder different from Gambling Addiction?

This is an interesting question as it touches on one of the most debated problems with Gaming Disorder. As a behavioural addiction, the diagnostic criteria for Gaming Disorder borrows heavily from Gambling Addiction. However, there are not only fundamental differences between gambling and gaming, but there are fundamental differences in why people engage in both to an addictive capacity.

For example, part of the diagnostic criteria for Gambling Disorder is being ‘preoccupied’ with gambling and thinking about it during your daily activities. This may involve thinking about how excited you are to sit in a dark room and gamble your paycheque away. In comparison, it is much more socially acceptable to think about gaming during other activities. It is common for people to be excited to play the hot new release when they are working, and it is also common for people to take time off work to play a new game (guilty as charged).

You also have to consider why people have these preoccupations. Gambling is primarily a solo hobby which people engage in due to factors such as the adrenaline rush of waiting to find out if you have won. When it comes to gaming, we might be excited to go home and hunt monsters with our friends and continue forging meaningful social relationships.

This raises the potential for people to engage in these different behaviours for different reasons. For example, people might game to an excessive degree because they are limited in their ability to socialise offline. If someone is lonely or suffers greatly from social anxiety, it isn’t particularly fair to consider them alongside people engaging in mundane solo hobbies.

This reason is potentially why we don’t have an umbrella diagnosis of a ‘behavioural addiction’. People engage in different behavioural addictions for different reasons, and each behavioural addiction has its own features and attractions to said behaviour. Having separate classifications respects the individuality of each behaviour and recognises that there are individual attractions that may need to be addressed in treatment (e.g. the social aspect of gaming). I don’t personally feel that the criteria for Gaming Disorder entirely respects the individuality of the hobby, so I am thankful for academics continuing to voice their concerns.

Why are the media reporting specifically on Gaming Disorder?

This is a tricky question because I have been trying for years to answer this question without sounding too hyperbolic or vitriolic. People have previously taken my nuanced writing, regurgitated it in their own article, and slapped eye-catching tags like ‘FAKE NEWS’ in bold lettering on it. This has led to people turning against me and my work despite having no control over this. Please know that my answer does not come from a place of vitriol, but from years of observing the reporting patterns on Gaming Disorder.

The reason why the media are paying particular attention to Gaming Disorder is because they know people will click it. Gaming as a hobby has existed for several decades, and there’s a very high likelihood that someone in the general reading audience knows someone who plays video games. If there are concerns over disordered gaming, this will not only get clicks from the gamers, but also from people who know gamers. Check the Facebook comments section on any BBC article on Gaming Disorder and you will see mothers tagging other mothers advising them to be mindful of little Timmy’s gaming.

Articles of this nature will also get attention from ‘both’ viewpoints. People will be angry and/or make jokes because they feel that they are now classified as disabled, or people who feel that gaming is contributing negatively to society will read it and share it. For lack of a better word, it is a sexy topic that gets lots of clicks, views and shares from people of all walks of life.

Are there any lesser-known symptoms of Gaming Disorder?

The current diagnostic criteria for Gaming Disorder can be viewed online here. While it is quite short, I would like to point out something that is not there that I feel needs to be reinforced.

There is not, and I can’t stress this enough, an arbitrary hours-per-week criterion that you have to meet in order to be diagnosed with Gaming Disorder. This myth keeps getting spread around, and it isn’t helped by people angrily proclaiming that they’ve just binged x game for y hours because they were excited to play it, not because they are an addict.

The BBC irresponsibly attached the line of “I played for 20 hours per week” to an article/video on gaming addiction. Not only was this sound byte great at getting people to watch and (angrily) share the video, but it also put out a false perception that 20 hours of gaming per week counts as an addiction. As stated earlier, I have debunked this claim with my own data analysis if you are interested in reading it.

Isn’t Gaming Disorder just a symptom of another problem like depression?

This is a good observation, but unfortunately there isn’t a neat or convenient answer for this. In response to the legitimisation of Gaming Disorder, I have seen plenty of comments such as “They just have depression, stop stigmatising gamers”. I can understand this perspective, but it’s not always this convenient in real life.

Let’s say someone moves to a new city to attend college. They don’t know anyone who is attending the college and, unfortunately, they haven’t been able to make any friends in their classes. As a result, they spend more time playing MMOs as it is easier to find like-minded people who make them feel better about this scary new time in their life. They increase their playtime to the extent where they don’t attend classes and are eventually kicked out of college. They begin to feel like a worthless failure and find it difficult to leave their bed due to factors such as guilt and anxiety surrounding the accumulation of student debt.

You could say that experiencing a hard time is what drove them to excessive gaming, but the consequences of this later drove them to experience depressive symptoms and anxiety. The cause-effect nature of excessive gaming and other mental health disorders is complicated and needs to be respected and managed by a qualified mental health professional. It would be irresponsible and slightly unfair to the complex nature of mental health to not respect this.

In this question, I’d like to touch quickly on something I have discussed in other pieces on Gaming Disorder. In my experience working with psychiatric case notes, I came across individuals who were noted as playing a lot of video games. It was noted that while someone may flourish socially online, they suffer from debilitating social anxiety offline. It became apparent that they enjoyed playing a lot of online games because it allowed them to feel confident when socialising. Their key worker would work to build their social confidence offline, giving them homework tasks such as having a nice lunch with their cousin in a café.

I can’t emphasise enough that no competent mental health system will stamp you with a big red ‘GAMER’ on your forehead and send you to Gamer Camp where you will be punished even for thinking about a game. Your history, your needs, and you as a person will be respected on your journey in becoming the best you that you can be.

How easily can I get disability money for Gaming Disorder?

A common response that I have seen to Gaming Disorder is something along the lines of “Woohoo, free disability money!”. I typically view comments like this as being shrouded in many layers of irony, but after seeing this response, no joke, about 100 times, I have to wonder just how many people are considering becoming full-time disabled gamers to avoid having to work. For these people, and for those who are simply curious, I would like to answer the question of what this process would realistically look like.

Before I begin, I would like to stress how morally bankrupt it is to pursue trying to cheat the mental health system. It is common for mental health systems to be overburdened and understaffed due to a combination of many things, including factors such as staff burnout and an increase in mental health problems such as debilitating anxiety. This can result in long waiting times to receive help for mental health difficulties.

As previously mentioned, part of my knowledge of mental health systems comes from the reading of psychiatric case notes. During this project, I read horrific things such as suicide attempts using gaming peripherals. If you are genuinely interested in cheating the mental health system, you are placing vulnerable people like this at risk due to making them wait longer to receive help.

Now that I have jumped off my high horse, I will break down for you how ‘easy’ it would be to receive disability money for Gaming Disorder.

To be blunt, in your pursuit of not having to do any work, you will basically need to work three jobs.

Firstly, you will need to become an actor. You will need to convince an experienced mental health professional who is very observant and good at reading people that you have lost control of your life due to gaming.

Secondly, you will need to become a fiction writer. Not only do you have to write your backstory, but you will have to try to keep track of everything you have ever said, what you will say, and ensure that there are no contradictions or plot holes in your story. It is also important to remember that the mental health professional will take notes every time you meet. This means that everything you say is being recorded and there is a record that they can check at any time if they get suspicious about something that you have said.

Thirdly, you will need to become a secretary. If you receive a diagnosis of Gaming Disorder, you will need to manually apply for disability. This involves an excessive amount of paperwork, so much so that people sometimes enlist legal aid to help with their application, incurring its own cost. You will also need to regularly check in with your application progress and keep a record of future paperwork.

So if you decide to go with your three-job lifestyle in the pursuit of having no job, you’re guaranteed to get disability money, right? Wrong.

I understand that each country has its own respective disability income system, but I primarily see people from the UK wistfully talking about becoming disabled gamers. To this, I say that these people are blissfully unaware of what is happening regarding Personal Independence Payment (PIP) in their own country.

Due to government crackdowns, it is increasingly difficult to achieve or maintain PIP. Sadly, tragic stories can reach the news of disabled individuals being denied PIP, sometimes culminating in death or suicide. The prevalence of this relationship has resulted in politicians calling for an inquiry into the role of PIP denial in these tragic deaths.

To summarise, in your pursuit of wanting to be unemployed and play video games, you will need to maintain three jobs while trying to succeed in a system that is increasingly designed for you to fail. If you are able to succeed, you are cheating a mental health worker out of time that they could be using to help a vulnerable person. It will be incredibly difficult for you and will be morally bankrupt.

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