The World Health Organization has declared that excessive video game playing can now be classified as a mental illness, but transgenderism is expected to be declassified as a mental disorder in 2018, despite the lack of scientific evidence in support of either move. These dangerous classifications could pave the way for diagnosing video game playing as a disease to be treated with pharmaceuticals while individuals who suffer from gender dysphoria will continue to go untreated and obtain sex reassignment procedures that only serve to further exacerbate the problem.
Gaming disorder will appear in the new draft of the WHO’s 11th International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), set to be released next year, the Daily Wire reports. Symptoms listed in the draft include “impaired control over gaming,” as well as selecting to play video games over “other life interests and daily activities.” The draft reads:
The behavior pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. The gaming behavior and other features are normally evident over a period of at least 12 months in order for a diagnosis to be assigned, although the required duration may be shortened if all diagnostic requirements are met and symptoms are severe.
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At the same time, transgenderism is expected to be declassified in 2018. The Washington Post reported in 2016, when steps in this direction became known:
The proposals to declassify transgender identity as a mental disorder have been approved by each committee that has considered it so far…. Transgender activist groups have been working toward this for years, said Mauro Cabral, one of the program directors of the Global Action for Trans Equality.
This expecteed declassification flies in the face of science as studies have continued to conclude that the notion of gender identity is not separate from biological sex. A 2016 report published in The New Atlantis journal, and co-authored by former Chief of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Dr. Paul McHugh and Arizona State University Professor of Statistics and Biostatistics Lawrence Mayer, observed, “Examining research from the biological, psychological, and social sciences, this report shows that some of the most frequently heard claims about sexuality and gender are not supported by scientific evidence.”
“The hypothesis that gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex — that a person might be ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ — is not supported by scientific evidence,” the researchers concluded.
The New Atlantis study also found that conditioning anyone to accept impersonation of the opposite sex via surgery or chemical influences is harmful. The authors observed that adults who choose to have sex-reassignment surgeries have “a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes.” They cite a study that found that “[sex-]reassigned individuals were about 5 times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide.”
But if the WHO refuses to identify transgenderism as a mental disorder, these individuals will not likely be offered the proper treatment for their condition and instead continue to pursue “treatments” such as sex reassignment that will prove harmful in the long-term.
And while the WHO is clearly willing to play the political correctness game in lieu of remaining faithful to science and medicine on the subject of transgenderism, it is paving the way for further overdiagnosis of mental disorders in children and adolescents that will inevitably lead to further over-medication by classifying video gaming a mental disorder.
Yahoo News notes, “The appearance of gaming disorder in the ICD-11 may have broader implications than we think. After all, it is this document that stipulates the international standard for what does and doesn’t qualify as a health condition, which means that doctors could soon diagnose patients with gaming disorder, and insurance companies could extend coverage for treatment of the ailment.”
It’s worth noting that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, created by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), already has video gaming on its radar, including it as a potential problem to be monitored for future inclusion in the DSM.
And that is the problem.
For decades, the framework for defining mental illness has expanded so much so that behaviors once considered to be healthy and normal are now labelled mentally ill. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already contends that 20 percent of American children may have a mental disorder, and that number is sure to increase substantially if the CDC accepts the notion that excessive video gaming is a mental disorder. After all, most video gamers are adolescents.
And it would not be long before Big Pharma develops a “medication” to combat that very problem, undoubtedly one that would minimize the child’s interest in all things so that he or she no longer takes pleasure in video gaming, or much else.
Meanwhile, how could this diagnosis potentially impact criminal prosecutions? Mental disorder labels are often used to cover up societal problems and criminal behaviors. How long would it be before criminals attempt to blame their crimes on their video gaming disorders?
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