https://archive.is/X2MBb

> The [World Health Organization] is proposing a new “Gaming Disorder” type of classification for addictive behavior, likening it to gambling disorder in a beta draft for their International Classification of Diseases for next year.

> The current proposition has the diagnosis listed under “disorders due to substance use or addictive behaviors,” and is also detailed as “mental and behavioral disorders that develop as a result of the use of predominantly psychoactive substances, including medications, or specific repetitive rewarding and reinforcing behaviors.”

> The classification goes on to describe this type of behavior:

“Disorders due to addictive behaviors are recognizable and clinically significant syndromes associated with distress or interference with personal functions that develop as a result of repetitive rewarding behaviors other than the use of dependence-producing substances,” words from the gaming section. “Disorders due to addictive behaviors include gambling disorder and gaming disorder, which may involve both online and offline behavior.”

> As this draft is in beta form, this doesn’t mean the World Health Organization is ready to label millions of gamers, including myself, as addicts. They could remove it before the final form is approved and published.

Irrelevant of actual addicts, we know this can and will be abused by the usual anti-gamer types to their advantage. If they can't claim games corrupt sane people, then they'll try to claim all gamers are addicted or insane. Other tricks could include hypocritical application- spending thousands of dollars on a mobile app is fine, but binging on a violent or new game when you get it is clearly a problem. Or watching X hours of TV, using the internet, or reading is not deemed addiction when the same amount of time gaming is.

As mentioned in the article's comments, waiting to see what happens won't work. We need to get the pitchforks out now to show we won't be fucked with or take it lying down.

All we have so far is contact info for WHO: http://www.who.int/about/contacthq/en/ not sure if asking them what the terms of diagnosis are would help us by exposing their hypocrisy or lack of understanding in replies, or just give them a guide on how to spin common questions they'll get.

World Health Organization Adds “Hazardous Gaming” To ICD-11 Draft

https://archive.is/GOOWb

> Gaming as an addiction isn’t the only thing that appeared in the ICD-11 beta draft for the World Health Organization’s upcoming update for listings of international diseases. According to Eurogamer, they recently spotted another new addition to the draft, this time including “hazardous gaming”.

> The entry is under factors that influence health status or require contact with health services, and is situated within the category of “Problems associated with health behaviors”. The entry in the ICD-11 beta draft reads…

< “Hazardous gaming refers to a pattern of gaming, either online or offline that appreciably increases the risk of harmful physical or mental health consequences to the individual or to others around this individual. The increased risk may be from the frequency of gaming, from the amount of time spent on these activities, from the neglect of other activities and priorities, from risky behaviours associated with gaming or its context, from the adverse consequences of gaming, or from the combination of these. The pattern of gaming is often persists in spite of awareness of increased risk of harm to the individual or to others.”

> The Entertainment Software Association chimed in to offer their take on the World Health Organization adding two entries for gaming into the ICD-11 draft, with a representative telling GamesIndustry.biz that they’re encouraging WHO to reverse course…

< “Just like avid sports fans and consumers of all forms of engaging entertainment, gamers are passionate and dedicated with their time. Having captivated gamers for more than four decades, more than 2 billion people around the world enjoy video games. The World Health Organization knows that common sense and objective research prove video games are not addictive. And, putting that official label on them recklessly trivializes real mental health issues like depression and social anxiety disorder, which deserve treatment and the full attention of the medical community. We strongly encourage the WHO to reverse direction on its proposed action.”

> There’s a part of the industry that’s afraid this could negatively impact gaming as a whole, with more restrictions and possible government scrutiny being brought down for additional regulation. However, there’s nothing indicating right now that such a event will take place. Others, however, don’t seem to mind it all that much.

> The additions to the WHO drafts were lobbied for by Asian countries, and it’s been known that South Korea has been aggressively pursuing adding video games as a form of addition given that they consider it one of the four evils of their society, despite e-sports and MMOs being some of the biggest exports from the country.

> There’s really no telling if the draft will go through, but there have already been some members close to the organization of the draft who have basically stated that the entries are a lock, which will be finalized for the 2018 report.

>>331472

IMO:

• Asian countries are pushing it to try and neuter a billion dollar industry in the west. They know it won't kill it, but they have a little less competition when they sell games using engines & studios they own (darn fun China is now being more open to foreign vidya, and showing off their work. It's like if alcohol or smokes were gonna have more severe health warnings, and China started showing off all their booze and tobacco)

• The fact even the ESA is trying to push back from this- a group who did jack shit for lootbox gambling- means they're fucking scared.

• The "hazardous gaming" could be wildly abused. (A) Taking behavior that is deemed bad due to SJW and claiming gaming caused it. and (B) Taking assholes that do bad things and happen to play games, and claim the game caused it. All so the "media changes your mind" argument can appeal to the authority of the World Health Organization.

> This man has racist opinions and plays a videogame where it is possible to kill non-white people. Clearly the game made him do it, since he's a "Gaming Addict" who did "Hazardous Gaming." (Even if the WHO says the games aggravated an existing psychological issue, the SJW and other enemies of gaming can twist it to claim the games came first.

> This man killed a person. He played videogames, so he must have been a "Gaming Addict" (even if the WHO only claim it is possible he was an addict but don't know due to lack of evidence, it can be twisted).

In short- anyone doing something bad can be claimed to be a gamer, as anyone with a PC, internet connection, or smartphone can play something.

• Makes devs scared to put certain mechanics into games, fearing bad PR if a nutcase does do something. 99.999% of your audience well adjusted people? Doesn't matter. The MSM will run stories on that individual to run your company into the ground (sort of what they tried to do with D&D and the sewer murders, but to no effect). Maybe a politician will even call for a ban on a game that's recently been mentioned for brownie points with certain voters. Even if it doesn't pass, more bad PR, less investors, less creative freedom for fear of being branded a maniac creator.

So, less sexy things because a rapist played your game- no matter how long or how often (or if the box was planted in his home). Less combat because a murderer had an internet search history showing he looked up the game's trailers and gameplay. He didn't actually play it- but that's how bad gaming is guys!

I think it's more than clear even if the WHO doesn't intentionally want to use this to kill off gaming (or "the wrong kind of gaming"), someone will.

We need to act now.

The WHO gets 75% of it's money from volunteers, and 25% from member states.

https://archive.is/APOth

https://archive.is/hyRS

IMO, dealing with WHO is like dealing with Youtube/Google. Both have mammoth warchests, but are deathly afraid of bad PR and the money fountain slowing down.

Possible plans of action:

> Dig and Create infographs mocking and informing the public. Put them in ALL gaming related hashtags and ALL mental health related hashtags. Don't play nice, get in people's faces about it. The goal of this is to reduce volunteer donations, and cause bad PR internationally- until it becomes a talking point amongst politicians.

< Infograph (A) - Anti-Chinese. Show evidence of Chinese lobbying for gaming addiction, and how their own "treatment centers" end up killing people- all the while buying out Unreal 4, and trying to get their games into the west. Paint it as China trying to kill their competition in an underhanded way. Then anti-China hype is still big amongst US patriots and Trump supporters.

< Infograph (B) - Defamation. Expose the biggest fuck-ups the WHO have made on mental health before, their own staff being hypocritical, and/or money being a bigger motivator than actual health. People only trust faceless organizations because they know nothing about them. Make it a talking point, and it'll become memetic to hate that group- much like the excessive health & safety regulations of the EU (and far worse crimes in recent history).

< Infograph (C) - History. Show how other hobbies have had psychos pinned to them by a busybody politician or body, and it didn't stick due to overwhelming common sense; sick people will do sick things, sane people won't. Then draw comparisons to what the WHO are doing now. This appeals to gamers (old and new) and those who might have other reasons to loathe those pinning shit they didn't do onto them.

< Infograph (D) - Anti-SJW. While it'd be preaching to our own, a lot of people are turning against the hard left whackjobs. Show how they've been going after gaming, and how the WHO's decision could mean that instead of claiming gaming makes you crazy, that everyone who games is already crazy. Not to mention the violation of freedom and danger it proposes to brand someone as insane because they like something. Appeals to the right, pro-trump; and as it says, anti-SJW.

< Infograph (E) - Slippry Slope. Show them how South Korea and China deals with Gaming Addiction. The social pariah it makes you, how it affects your credit score, how it affects your chances at a job, and how those who are "treated" go through hell. It's not fear mongering, it's a possibility. If smokers and drinkers are less likely to get organ transplants, why shouldn't other "soft" vices also have some restrictions. Clearly, anyone who games is a waste of a human being. Appeals to gamers and those who have been falsely branded over addictions or obsessions they didn't have.

> Request your government ask about it, and explain your concerns. A politician will say and even do whatever they believe will give them votes or PR. So give them a story they can run with- big bad WHO trying to brand healthy patriotic consumers as insane because they enjoy their hobby. You're not asking for them not to do it, but they need careful guidance to ensure they don't over-step their mark. After all, they wouldn't want the whole US/European/[your country here] gaming industry to collapse and harm the economy. BAM, you've told them it's pro freedom, pro consumer, pro economy, and they don't have to stop it, they just have to make demands and wag their finger- all bad PR for WHO again. Call/email your senator or equivalent.

> Request Youtubers you like cover this topic. A short video is easier to pass around, and something about videos just makes fuckers click it rather than read an article or text on an image. If they spoke against SJW, bad game journos, or for artistic freedom- odds are that'll be good. But don't be afraid to try big youtubers as well. The more eyes we get on this the better, right now it's only known to a limited part of the gaming community. If you get someone like DeFranco or PewDiePie, then it blows up too fast for WHO to effectively PR, as people ask stuff. And hasty answers can be used to hang them later.

>>>/gamergatehq/319248

As warned by Gook Anon- South Korea may have been a testing ground for elites. Anything that happens their could happen in the west years later. With this, it seems like it has. Unless it is directly and violently opposed now

Put all info you have on "treatment" for gaming addiction here.

https://archive.is/eAHzy (Chinese Teen Dies at Internet Addiction Rehab Camp) - can't find the gaming equivalent of this story. It seems their internet addiction camp is also their gaming addiction camp?

https://archive.is/LaMC4 MotherJones doesn't scold it (no surprises) but the pictures might get some fear out of it.

https://archive.is/OJYw8 Guardian tries to muddy the water, by citing examples of electroshock therapy, then the camp their focusing on being a lot "softer". It fails, as the place still has military style training (a big "eek" factor for normalfags). The bootcamp runner is a former soldier nicknamed "the evil godfather". The initial paragraph about the parents tricking and abandoning their kid is especially heart-rending.

https://archive.is/j1ORW Another take on a teen dying less than 48 hours after entering. It seems beatings are administered. Even if the person is rightfully upset, do they beat a teenager like they'd beat a trained soldier who is physically fit? In any case, the Government shuts then down, tells others not to do it, then carry on and (presumably) build more.

https://archive.is/mQ4PF Another take on the same story as above. Pushing China's hypocrisy (investing in games, yet pushing these prison camps and for the WHO to make the world follow suit) could be a gold-mine. IF we can show China encouraged the UN to do the same. I'm not talking bribes or lobbying (though if you find it- great!) but stuff like a politician making a speech asking the WHO to do it. Not surprisingly, you may need knowledge of Chinese.

https://archive.is/y4hTD Chinese Military plays to much Honor For Kings - (a game soon to be on the Switch). It helps muddy the waters further. If the Chinese Government can't stop their own trained soldiers from playing, what hope do they have for teenagers and children? Were the soldiers actually addicted? Do they treat the teenagers and children the same way they'd treat the soldiers? If Nintendo show off Honor For Kings (called Arena of Valor in the EU and US), then be sure to fill the game's hashtag with all the info on what China do to people who play it.

Also, while they are technically our enemies for all their past fuck ups, the ESA is allegedly against this.

If we find concrete info while digging, be sure to send it to them. This is a rare scenario where enemy of my enemy applies.

I also request Acid stickies this thread, due to the magnitude it could have on us all. They're not coming after our games, they're coming after us.

More articles.

https://archive.is/Xg6xI Even Kotaku has some reasonable takes.

> “I have considerable concerns about this proposed diagnosis,” said Dr. Chris Ferguson, a psychologist who studies the effects of consistent game-playing. Ferguson is one voice in the sizable backlash against the WHO’s draft. He explained that, early in psychologists’ debates about gaming addiction, some compared apparent victims’ compulsive behaviors to substance abusers’. Ferguson thinks that was their first mistake.

> The push to pathologize gaming, he believes, is based off misguided comparisons to heroin or cocaine addiction: “There are many myths such as that games involve dopamine and brain regions similar to substance abuse,” Ferguson said. “There’s a kernel of truth to that but only insofar as any pleasurable activity activates these regions. How gaming involves them is more similar to other fun activities like eating chocolate, having sex, getting a good grade, etc., not heroin or cocaine.”

> University of Oxford psychologist Andrew Przybylski echoed Ferguson’s concerns, adding that “It’s a very bad idea.” He’s concerned that most studies done on gaming addiction are low quality. Codifying gaming addiction as a tried and true disorder could risk “stigmatising millions of players and may divert limited mental health resources from core psychiatric problems such as depression or anxiety which might be at the heart of problematic play,” he said over e-mail.

> Both Ferguson and Przybylski acknowledge that some people overdo gaming at the expense of their health and sanity. What’s worth focusing on, they say, is less the “gaming” aspect of that behavior, but the “overdoing” aspect. The impetus to approach something compulsively might matter more than what that “something” is. Research they’ve done and read suggests that what looks like gaming disorder, a lot of the time, is a symptom of depression, anxiety or attention deficit disorder. The WHO’s definition of gaming disorder could inspire an inaccurate diagnosis when, in fact, gaming could just be a coping mechanism for something already known.

> “It doesn’t appear to be a stable construct,” Ferguson explained.

> Last year, dozens of psychologists, including Ferguson, penned a grave article [https://archive.is/bBTqQ] in response to the WHO’s proposal to list gaming disorder. Declaring that the proposal had “fundamental issues” like poor research quality and a lack of consensus, the paper warned that a rushed decision could have bad consequences. It could contribute to a stigma around gaming that affects healthy gamers. It could also waste public health resources spurred by an echo of the ‘90s moral panic around games.

http://akademiai.com/doi/pdf/10.1556/2006.5.2016.088 Link to the PDF. Might be worth getting key quotes from this to make infographs.

Especially the part about how the WHO are treating it like drugs, when it does not give the same high.

Comparisons to how ADHD was a catch-all for parents who couldn't control their kids also helps. Dig into that and make comparisons to now.

https://archive.is/GS4HU - twitter.com/AllenFrancesMD/status/947072022416318464 Worth spreading

twitter.com/search?q=Gaming%20Addiction&src=typd - Some surprisingly good takes so far.

>>331474

< Infograph (C) History

From an anon in a thread:

https://www.hooktube.com/watch?v=MFhm-xhQocM

> This embed has got you covered for most of that. The only problem is that it presents it too much from a "conspiracy" and "horror"direction.

Take the information.

Repackage it (infograph, article, summery, etc).

And share it.

No point letting good research die because it's presented like controlled opposition.

>W.H.O. Seeks to Classify ‘Gaming Disorder’ as a Mental Illness, Claims ‘Enormous’ Stakeholder Pressure

31 Mar 2017

https://archive.fo/EQiaE

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/03/31/who-seeks-to-classify-gaming-disorder-as-a-mental-illness-claims-enormous-stakeholder-pressure/

>But even aside from all of that, Dr. Ferguson argues the science just doesn’t back up the WHO’s conclusion:

<Many of the “symptoms” proposed (particularly for the DSM version) are kind of normal stuff that many studies suggest aren’t really good predictors of problems. There’s also data suggesting the whole concept of “video game addiction” isn’t really stable and tends to go away by itself over time without treatment.

>The concern lies in the history of using classifications of mental illness as a weapon against groups and individuals by countries’ governments. Over 6,000 people in China — most of them teenagers — have been treated with actual electroshock therapy just because they were thought to have used the Internet too much. China also has a long history of committing whistleblowers and other dissidents to psychiatric “care” for the crime of disagreement. The subject is extensively covered in the 2002 book Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and Its Origins in the Mao Era, published by Human Rights Watch.

>Richard J. Bonnie’s paper “Political Abuse of Psychiatry in the Soviet Union and in China: Complexities and Controversies,” published in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law in 2002, also paints a picture of just how convenient it can be for the powerful to leverage psychological diagnoses in order to silence those who disagree. He explains that such practices are “uniformly understood to be a particularly pernicious form of repression,” citing examples in which “psychatric diagnosis was essentially an exercise of social power.” By way of example, Bonnie explains:

<Under applicable laws of Russia and the other former Soviet Republics, a person charged with a crime could be subjected to “custodial measures of a medical nature” if the criminal act was proved and the person was found “nonimputable” due to mental illness.7 Nonimputable offenders could be placed in maximum security hospitals (the notorious “special hospitals”) or in ordinary hospitals, depending on their social dangerousness. All the persons interviewed by the delegation had been found nonimputable and socially dangerous and confined in special hospitals after criminal proceedings that deviated substantially from the general requirements specified in Soviet law. Typically, the patients reported that they had been arrested, taken to jail, taken to a hospital for forensic examination, and then taken to another hospital under a compulsory treatment order, without ever seeing an attorney or appearing in

court.

>>331480

<The delegation found that there was no clinical basis for the judicial finding of nonimputability in 17 of these cases. In fact, the delegation found no evidence of mental disorder of any kind in 14 cases. It is likely that these individuals are representative of many hundreds of others who were found nonimputable for crimes of political or religious dissent in the Soviet Union, mainly between 1970 and 1990.

>And with regard to China:

<Munro’s research indicates, convincingly in my view, that the Soviet system of forensic psychiatry was transplanted to China during the 1950s and 1960s, thereby placing a small subset of psychiatrists at the intersection of criminal prosecution and psychiatric confinement, and importing a smoothly oiled process by which psychiatrists found that most offenders referred for assessment lacked criminal responsibility and committed them for treatment without any adjudication or judicial oversight. Eventually, in the 1980s, China also established a system of maximum-security forensic hospitals (Ankang), modeled after the Soviet “special hospitals,” for confining offenders who present a “social danger.”

>But lest you think that more open societies are immune to this insidious form of manipulation, consider our own messy history of psychiatric abuse. In 2010, a police officer was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward for attempting to reveal what he said was the truth about falsified crime rate statistics. He was eventually paid $600,000 in a settlement by the City of New York after filing a $50 million human rights violation suit. Our foster care system stuffs victimized children full of psychotropic drugs in a thinly veiled attempted to make them easier to handle. Schizophrenia was allegedly used to deliberately hamper the rise of civil rights. Barry Goldwater was publicly crucified for his conservative views by a team of psychiatrists who disagreed with him politically; the Goldwater Rule still exists because attacking someone’s mental fitness is such a potent weapon.

>In supporting diagnoses that are nebulous and unproven, the World Health Organization is giving its tacit approval of an arguably unscientific diagnosis with endless potential for abuse around the world. At best, it could be an easy platform upon which to medicate individuals instead of identifying actual behavioral issues. At worst, it could be one more tool — easily applied to just about any connected citizen — for silencing the inconvenient.

>>331480

>>331481

Breitbart is a pretty loathed source by normalfags, but the raw info proves:

This can be abused by governments as it has in the past, and its being pushed by money.

That email screencap alone could sink it if put in a nice infograph.

Can we get in contact with Dr.Ferguson? Not sure what it can do, but letting him know he's got more warm bodies out there might mean he puts stuff on social media we can spread.

>>331480

>>331481

Forgot to include this picture from the Breitbart article.

twitter.com/nichegamer/status/948990836527726593

https://archive.is/ee8gU

http://nichegamer.com/2018/01/04/gaming-not-will-never-real-addiction/

https://archive.is/94ud8

NicheGamer did a good article on it, share the love- and the truth.

Tried to dump some facts in this latest spiel of mental-health scares:

https://twitter.com/MockNDrole/status/1008751445968080896