WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition • Hacker News Board

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#81

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 9:35 PM UTC

wdewind wrote: post #52

mjburgess wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, sigh. I was writing with ADHD in mind actually. Up to 10% children really do have ADHD which is a delay in the development of the frontal lobe. Such a delay seems "somewhat common" amongst humans. More than half catch up, leaving upto 5% of adults with some form of ADHD. ADHD is serious. It is a severe impairment to planning, self-management, emotional regulation, etc. You are likely to be impoverished without s…

I've read a lot of your posts on this thread and appreciate your perspective. I agree with a lot of it. Honest question for you though: isn't it a bit weird to label something as a disorder if 5-10% of the population has it? Isn't it just a fairly standard human existence then? I think that's where a lot of the discomfort comes from.

A significant amount of blacks worldwide had sickle cell anemia. In the past when humans lived in more isolated and homogeneous societies this was the standard existence. In fact, it conferred a resistance against malaria. Today, we have better treatments for that disease that don't carry the same side effects.

A more prescient and present example is that almost all humans are subject to cognitive biases. A wise man known as Citizen G'Kar once said "In the past, we had little contact with other races. Evolution taught us that we must fight that which is different in order to secure land, food, and mates for ourselves. But we must reach a point where the nobility of intellect asserts itself and says no, we need not fear those who are different. We can embrace those differences and learn from them."

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#82

Post by axiometry » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 9:36 PM UTC

wdewind wrote: post #67

ed312 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also poor eyesight, color blindness, partial deafness, &c. The reality all of these diseases/disorders are readily and inexpensively treated and not an issue in modern society.

There is a wide difference in the prevalence, severity of condition and extremity of treatment in some of these conditions. Poor eyesight afflicts a large portion of the population, but the severity of the issue and the extremity of the treatment are not high. It doesn't impact your ability to maintain social relationships, for instance, and the treatment is very well understood and has low/no side effects. Color bli…

"...massively volatile understanding of mental illness over the last 50 years...": The sort of volatility you undertake on a path toward drastic improvement.

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#83

Post by somenewacc » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 11:24 PM UTC

pantalaimon wrote: post #38

hhmc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unconvinced this is true for physiological addiction (e.g. opiates).

You still need a reason to regularly take them in the first place, before the physical addiction kicks in.

For opiates, the reason is often being prescribed them for pain.

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#84

Post by wdewind » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 12:16 AM UTC

axiometry wrote: post #82

wdewind wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a wide difference in the prevalence, severity of condition and extremity of treatment in some of these conditions. Poor eyesight afflicts a large portion of the population, but the severity of the issue and the extremity of the treatment are not high. It doesn't impact your ability to maintain social relationships, for instance, and the treatment is very well understood and has low/no side effects. Color bli…

"...massively volatile understanding of mental illness over the last 50 years...": The sort of volatility you undertake on a path toward drastic improvement.

And yet by many measures mental health issues are increasing not decreasing so where is all this drastic improvement?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-changing-culture/20...

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#85

Post by Izkata » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 12:42 AM UTC

wdewind wrote: post #67

ed312 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also poor eyesight, color blindness, partial deafness, &c. The reality all of these diseases/disorders are readily and inexpensively treated and not an issue in modern society.

There is a wide difference in the prevalence, severity of condition and extremity of treatment in some of these conditions. Poor eyesight afflicts a large portion of the population, but the severity of the issue and the extremity of the treatment are not high. It doesn't impact your ability to maintain social relationships, for instance, and the treatment is very well understood and has low/no side effects. Color bli…

> Color blindness, partial deafness etc., are readily and inexpensively treated, but they do not afflict 5-10% of the young and healthy population.

Isn't color blindness in men right in that range?

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#86

Post by juicyfroot » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 1:37 AM UTC

algesten wrote: post #15

mjburgess wrote: post #2

Before the sceptics get in: 1. The purpose of DSM/ICD is often to justify financing treatment: > Chris Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson University ... described the ICD as "the book of real diseases that you can get insurance payments for." 2. Treatment has to be mindful of the specific form of addiction: > "These are co-morbid conditions," he said. "If you just treat the depression and not gaming, the…

> 3. modern clinical psychiatry is an evidenced-based, research-driven field which treats and forms diagnoses on the basis of decades of research into any particular condition. It isnt the 1950s. But isn't modern clinical psychiatry marred by the same problems social or economic sciences are? Ultimately you are studying/interpreting human behaviour, which doesn't lend itself well to quantisation or categorising.

Modern psychiatry is NOT evidence based.

No scientific evidence is used to choose to include into DSM

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#87

Post by xekc » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 1:04 PM UTC

So, generally speaking, anything a large enough group of people would find themselves too passionately engaged in - can be considered at it's extremes as a disorder - from utilitarian, dominating "usefulness of the body" perspective? Ant world!

Then extreme sports go next? "Base jumping addiction" (deadly!) or let's just go big and make "adrenaline junkie" a serious medical condition? Who in Sci-Fi got this right?

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#88

Post by mjburgess » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

xapata wrote: post #33

mjburgess wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most reasonable thing to think about any mental health disorder is whatever the consensus in clinical psychiatry is. That is the point. It is so overwhelmingly well-researched, that even if its conclusions are wrong, no lay person is going to be in a position to have "an argument" that hasn't already been considered and researched and folded into the consensus. This isnt the case with social sciences, and it isnt…

Sounds like you're not familiar with sociology nor macroeconomics literature.

My concern was to defend the topic at hand. Trying to distinguish between different forms of economics and sociology would muddy the waters a great deal.

For sure, no doubt, there is highly defensible macroeconomic and sociological work done.

There does seem to be a boundary where sociology meets macroeconomics meets english literature meets arsty-psychology wherein a huge amount of highly speculative work is done. Work which seems, as far as its truth apt, mostly false.

I don't think this work properly belongs to any of those subjects and is really a kind of speculative blogging that certain academics like to do that happens to get published somewhere. However that also tends to get seen more often than their detailed work on interest rates in the 1970s.

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#89

Post by mjburgess » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 2:07 PM UTC

wdewind wrote: post #84

axiometry wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...massively volatile understanding of mental illness over the last 50 years...": The sort of volatility you undertake on a path toward drastic improvement.

And yet by many measures mental health issues are increasing not decreasing so where is all this drastic improvement? https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-changing-culture/20...

Improvement is in treating.

Don't false equivocate. If we were to open more mines than there were in 1900 we may well see more broken legs. However we're far better at treating a broken leg.

Though it is not at all clear that "mental health" is deteriorating. It may be that some forms of mental health issues are more prevalent today (eg. anxiety and depression). But that is no where near the whole picture.

An entire generation of people were traumatized by WW1 and WW2, and by the generation of parents who through that traumatization, traumatized their children.

Extreme disorders of the personality, PTSD, etc. simply were seen as normal then because they were so overwhelmingly common. PTSD didnt exist as a diagnosis till 70s, and yet it would characterize a generation of people under war.

If I were to speculate, I would say that we are overwhelmingly better in our general mental health.

That we recognise it as an issue suggest a profound advancement.

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#90

Post by mjburgess » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 2:14 PM UTC

wdewind wrote: post #47

mjburgess wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bane of society, I think, is mentally healthy people. They run politics but have absolutely no appreciation for what works for non-healthy people. Which is all the people who acutally rely on politics/society. I think conservatism as a personality is a symptom of good mental health: if you arent able to do something, its lazyness. So you must just need some motivation: either a beating or some money. etc. That's…

> I think conservatism as a personality is a symptom of good mental health: if you arent able to do something, its lazyness. So you must just need some motivation: either a beating or some money. etc. This is a really cynical view of conservatism and I have a hard time seeing how you don't see half the country as evil if that's what you think. Another view might be: this stuff is so complicated, and as you pointed ou…

I don't see it being cynical. I think it's the opposite of evil. It paints conservatives as entirely reasonable people making entirely reasonable suggestions but simply failing to appreciate difference.

A failure to appreciate difference is not evil, its part of how everyone acts in entirely well-intentioned ways.

Also, I dont think anywhere near half of any country has a conservative personality. Certainly the GOP are not today defined by their conservatism, whatever it is, it is radical.

I would say a fundamentally conservative personality is something most common in the vaguely upper-middle classes. It is present, to a degree, in the more traditional working class environments (eg. mom-and-pop store children, etc.).

It's all about seeing your success follow from your actions in a way that you control. It's about being able to plan, execute, and understand consistently -- for most of your life.

I think that's rarer than half, maybe 1/3? At a guess. And i think its not partisan: there are leftwing and rightwing conservatives.