A study of young online gamers showed that the prevalence of Internet gaming disorder in Taiwan is about 3.1 percent, slightly higher than many European countries and the US, National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) researchers said yesterday.
The WHO in June classified “gaming disorder” as a mental health condition in its International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) — a list used by health professionals when making diagnoses and treatment plans.
Lin Yu-hsuan (林煜軒), a National Taiwan University Hospital psychiatrist and assistant research fellow at NHRI’s Institute of Population Health Sciences; Pan Yuan-chien (潘元健), a psychologist; and Chiu Yu-chuan (邱于峻), a psychiatrist at Mackay Memorial Hospital, discussed their study at a news conference at the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Taipei.
They asked mental health counselors at 169 schools, from elementary to senior-high, to conduct structured diagnostic interviews of 8,110 students aged between 10 and 18 who had played Internet games in the past year.
“We used a globally recognized system of diagnostic criteria for Internet gaming disorder, which has nine symptoms, and those who meet five or more symptoms are defined as having Internet gaming disorder,” Lin said. “These symptoms have to frequently occur and continue for over a span of one year.”
Children or adolescents who play for long hours during summer vacations, but not during the school year, were not identified as having the disorder, he said.
“We found that the prevalence of Internet gaming disorder in children and adolescents is about 3.1 percent,” Lin said.
That figure might surprise many people, because studies that used other criteria have suggested the prevalence of Internet gaming addition to be 20 to 30 percent, he said.
However, nearly all studies using diagnostic criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association in 2013 for Internet gaming disorder suggested the prevalence to be less than 5 percent, and that the core symptom is being focused on “gaming behavior leading to distress or significant impairment in daily life functioning,” rather than “spending too much time on gaming,” he said.
A large-scale study conducted last year in Germany, the UK and the US suggested that the prevalence is only about 1 percent, Lin said.
“Up to 71.5 percent of the students in our study do not even have one symptom,” he said, adding that many children and adolescents use Internet gaming as a method to relieve stress or negative emotions, but those who are “addicted” need to play more frequently to feel satisfied.
Up to 52 percent of those identified as addicted have spent money in the games and spend an average of 41 hours per week playing games, which is about twice the percentage of non-addicted players — 25 percent and 24 hours respectively, Lin said.
From a clinical perspective, the problem is not just that the games are addictive, but that the addicted youngsters usually have real life problems that lead them to seek escape online, the trio said.
The government and the public should encourage these youngsters to improve their health, rather than treat them as mentally ill, they said.
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