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WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

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Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#91

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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…

This is an interesting perspective. I would add that there may be multiple "healthy" modes of being human that are quite different, and some of these modes may be a small minority. In a small tribe these cognitive differences may have been valued (depending on the tribe of course!), but in our modern, highly systematized society these people are often considered a social "misfit" for being unable or unwilling to play…

> the rules of society are designed by the neurotypical majority

That's another way of putting it. I'm not sure the majority are neurotypical however.

I think, rather, "neurotypicality" is a background assumption of certain institutions because it's easier to design for an average even if it doesn't exist (no 1 human being is mean in every respect).

However those who experience life-long mental health, and esp. for most of their childhood, I think are overwhelmingly "conservative" in their personalities. And I think these sort do tend to find themselves in more elite/visible positions.

Political systems represent those who hold power. They do not represent a majority (power is the mechanism of representation, not mere existence).

In democracies, there is more "tending towards the majority". But still, it is very much a symptom of who can be elected, who is elected, etc.

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#92
>The disorder is characterized by "impaired control" with increasing priority given to

Oh please, then I assume every hobby in the world can be considered "hobby-name disorder". If it's something that help the millennium generation to relax and free their mind a few minutes /hours and if the society doesn't find something to come and reach the same level of satisfaction we found the "solution", it's a mental disorder... We really evolved... NOT

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#93
post #20

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Honestly I think about half the problem is that psychiatric illnesses don't make people bleed, so there's no way to universally tell something is wrong.

I think the conflict here is more in that way: Do you want to give people medicine so they can conform to what society expects from them, or do you instead try to change society so it doesn't have this expectations in the first place. With ADHD what a lot of people see is this: You are not being efficient, so that is a flaw that needs to be fixed. But where is the line? Should we really optimize for maximal productiv…

Yes, this "Social" view of disability has I think, gone too far.

A dog with three legs is much worse at being a dog.

There is really something it is to be a human, and it isnt just defined by culture and present-day society.

We live on earth. We eat food. We socialize. We, by being human, do a very large number of things merely because we are human. And if you damage part of our body, we can't do those things. And doing those things is a fundamental part of what we do.

ADHD really is a neurological impairment on this scale. It isn't "being less productive". It is a torture, a trauma, an on-going alienating, destabilizing impairment.

You might say "well couldn't there be a society where ADHD was an advantage"... i'd say basically No, not without changing the human species.

Yes, maybe we could imagine one. A society perfectly designed for people with ADHD, but when you describe that society in detail, you'd discover its profoundly impairing to people without ADHD.

As in, imagine we all lived as if we had no arms. That would be an extreme oppression to the almost everyone who does. And that's because on-earth, doing the things human beings do, arms are inherently part of doing those things well. That is why not having arms is a disability, not a lifestyle choice.

Similarly for vision, hearing, etc.

ADHD is an impairment to advanced cognitive function. It's an impairment to your minds ability to "see" itself.

The moment we start to say, of children with ADHD, that they should have this impairment.. that it's our "culture" that decides this impairment is bad... I think that's a gross abuse of those children.

It's turning your own lack of dependence on pharmacology, your own health, into a trap for people who do need it.

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most recent studies in psychiatry and social sciences that I have read, even those published in Nature, use sample sizes of around 50 people, which should be considered insufficient. Instead they use various cooked up formulas for correcting for gender/ethnicity etc. Instead, sample sizes should be much bigger. Of course this is not practical or even perhaps impossible. I find this to be a poor excuse, though. The ma…

psychiatry =/= psychology =/= social psychology This is more "everything is the same" anti-expertism. Clinical psychiatry is not about p-hacking groups of 50. The treatment of bipolar disorder hasnt been decided on the basis of what happened to the last dozen undergrad students. >The matter of fact is, we know very little about how the brain works. Profoundly untrue. Even if it were truth, its very truth would preclu…

I had a look at this review on bipolar disorder, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e8508 . According to a study referenced in it, 68 randomized trials where used to determine the effect of different drugs compared to placebo. Again the sample size is low and the statistical significance is also small, unless I'm missing something.

You are correct in saying that we don't actually know how much we know about the brain. But the brain is s much more complex than e.g. planets orbiting the sun. There are many components that can get affected by chemical compounds in the short term, but more importantly in the long term. I agree though that only through testing can we get a better understanding. It is just the way it's currently done that I disagree. I would gladly read some research you think is good and does not have the shortcomings I describe.

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most recent studies in psychiatry and social sciences that I have read, even those published in Nature, use sample sizes of around 50 people, which should be considered insufficient. Instead they use various cooked up formulas for correcting for gender/ethnicity etc. Instead, sample sizes should be much bigger. Of course this is not practical or even perhaps impossible. I find this to be a poor excuse, though. The ma…

You can't condemn sample size without also condemning the statistical methodology of an experiment. "Small sample size thus irrelevant" does not make sense despite often being the top comment on Reddit.

This is correct. Sample size should be dependent on the strength of the effect. As a rule of thumb though, a sample of 50 people is very little. If physics used these kind of sample sizes and confidence levels, we would have discovered multitudes of new particles.

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#96
post #84

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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…

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

By what measure? Because I just posted a bunch of studies that show the opposite, and they actually address a lot of the issues you brought up.

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#97
post #52

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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…

> In fact, it conferred a resistance against malaria.

I think this is one of my main points: if such a large percentage of the population has something that we think of as a large negative, it's probably a good time to take a step back and wonder if we aren't understanding the whole picture because evolution tends to take care of such low hanging fruit.

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#98
post #85
post #67

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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?

Off hand I have no idea, but it's also the severity aspect here that is different. Color blind people do not have problems with executive function, maintaining social relationships, depression etc.

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#99
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If I were to speculate, I would say that we are overwhelmingly better in our general mental health. By what measure? Because I just posted a bunch of studies that show the opposite, and they actually address a lot of the issues you brought up.

> By what measure?

Did you even read my reply?

I looked at those studies. They do not at all address issues like PTSD, personality disorders, trauma and other mental health issues which, for example, would certainly characterize huge numbers of people in the interwar and post-war period. Yet, where as these numbers?

PTSD didnt exist at the time. Trauma wasnt even considered, in part, because it was so wide spread.

Domestic violence, murder, rape, assault, theft, etc. were crazy high only 30 years ago.

Western societies were incredibly violent and predatory placeo, and this gets significantly worse the further you go back. At the beginning of the 20th C. 1 in 20 women were dying in childbirth, murder was 10-a-penny, almost everyone was impoverished. Children routinely went hungry.

But oh year. Now we're a bit more depressed.

THe 20th C. was a century of trauma. Child abuse was institutionalized. Domestic violence was how families worked. WW1, WW2, Vietnam (and many other wars) left a generation of men absolutely traumatized.

The studies have no reliable data to work with, as there was no empirical psychology for the bulk of the 20th C. collecting societal-level information on mental health.

Subjective "happiness" reporting has not much to do with mental health. A financially secure person who was routinely sexually assaulted as a child may well report being happier in 1985 than a poorer, less economically stable person today with otherwise excellent mental health.

For several decades economic securiyt has been decreasing in the west causing people to feel less "happy" (ie., to be more often worrying). This has an impact on their mental health, but I'm sceptical it comes close to the impact of the vietnam war.

The 20th C. was horrific and a horror for everyone. Any "psychologist" nostalgic for the 20th C. either knows nothing of psychology, nothing of history or both.

Re: WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition

#100
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I were to speculate, I would say that we are overwhelmingly better in our general mental health. By what measure? Because I just posted a bunch of studies that show the opposite, and they actually address a lot of the issues you brought up.

> By what measure? Did you even read my reply? I looked at those studies. They do not at all address issues like PTSD, personality disorders, trauma and other mental health issues which, for example, would certainly characterize huge numbers of people in the interwar and post-war period. Yet, where as these numbers? PTSD didnt exist at the time. Trauma wasnt even considered, in part, because it was so wide spread. Do…

Hi, FWIW I did not downvote you and don't agree whoever did.

> I looked at those studies. They do not at all address issues like PTSD, personality disorders, trauma and other mental health issues which, for example, would certainly characterize huge numbers of people in the interwar and post-war period. Yet, where as these numbers?

Exactly, we don't have them. But I don't see any measures of any kind of mental health improving, with the exception of teen suicide rates in the early 90s. I do see quite a bit of data going back that shows depression, for instance, getting worse, and specifically comparing post WW2 generations to millenials: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2648043

So I repeat my question, how are you so sure things are getting better when there is very little or no data saying that, and a fair amount saying the opposite? Wouldn't you expect depression to also be a symptom of experiencing intense trauma and thus a fairly good proxy for PTSD?

> For several decades economic securiyt has been decreasing in the west causing people to feel less "happy" (ie., to be more often worrying). This has an impact on their mental health, but I'm sceptical it comes close to the impact of the vietnam war. The 20th C. was horrific and a horror for everyone. Any "psychologist" nostalgic for the 20th C. either knows nothing of psychology, nothing of history or both.

So this is exactly why it's important to consider this with data instead of logical models. By all means the events of the early 20th century were so horrific that there should be some fairly obvious measurement of mental health that upticks by the end of the 20th century. But we don't see that anywhere, afaict. So that's what I'm hoping you can provide.

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