Victor Tombs wrote: ↑Mon Jun 18, 2018 1:55 am
Talvieno wrote: ↑Sun Jun 17, 2018 6:52 pm
Neat... but, I feel like there are a
lot of things that should be considered a mental health condition
far before gaming.
I remember gaming helped me recover from depression some years back.
On this subject, Victor, I'm going to mention Stardew Valley. From a google search of "Stardew Valley helped me with depression":
How Stardew Valley Helped Me Cope with Depressive Episodes
Stardew Valley Has Really Helped with My Depression
One Day at a Time: How Stardew Valley Can Help Mental Health
Stardew Valley and Using Games as Therapy
How Stardew Valley Is Literally Curing My Depression
Different games have helped me cope with depression at times, too. Games can absolutely be a healing tool. The people that lumped them in as purely addictive are shortsighted and narrow-minded, I think. Yes, gaming can be a problem - but then, anything can be a problem. You could be "addicted" to woodworking to the point that you quit your job and your health starts failing. It could be drawing, or riding a motorcycle, or watching TV, or birdwatching. Why single out video games? Anyone that really put any effort into researching it would have found that games can actually help people. If someone
is playing video games for hours and hours - maybe the issue isn't the video games at all, but they're coping with depression or anxiety. Trying to treat gaming as an addiction just means you're removing the thing that's helping them cope with the underlying problem. Instead, you should try to treat the problem at the source: the depression or anxiety behind it.
In brief, I'm almost disgusted by the WHO's decision. To me, it sounds like less of a medical thing and more of a political one.
