Peer-Reviewed Study

Gaming Disorder: Its Delineation as an Important Condition for Diagnosis, Management, and Prevention

Sep 2017 🌐 Journal of Behavioral Addictions PEER-REVIEWED

Published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions in 2017, this consensus paper brings together more than two dozen addiction specialists worldwide — including Susumu Higuchi and his Kurihama colleague Satoko Mihara — to explain and support the World Health Organization's move to add gaming disorder to the draft eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). The authors summarize national studies reporting gaming-disorder-consistent patterns in an estimated 10–15% of young people in several Asian countries, compared with roughly 1–10% in some Western countries, and point to research describing overlapping brain regions activated in gaming disorder, other behavioral addictions, and substance-use disorders. The group argues a formal diagnostic category is needed to support consistent clinical management and prevention efforts internationally. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as the core international scientific statement behind the WHO's gaming disorder classification, of which Higuchi's clinical program was an early real-world example.

Estimated 10%–15% prevalence among young people in parts of Asia vs. 1%–10% in some Western countries

The consensus statement cites national surveys reporting gaming-disorder-consistent patterns in an estimated 10%–15% of young people in several Asian countries, compared with roughly 1%–10% of young people in some Western countries.

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CITATION

Saunders, John B., Wei Hao, Jiang Long, Daniel L. King, Karl Mann, Mira Fauth-Bühler, Hans-Jürgen Rumpf, Henrietta Bowden-Jones, Afarin Rahimi-Movaghar, Tammy Chung, Emily Chan, Nady Bahar, Sophia Achab, Hae Kook Lee, Marc Potenza, Nancy Petry, Daniel Spritzer, Atul Ambekar, Jeffrey Derevensky, Mark D. Griffiths, Halley M. Pontes, Daria Kuss, Susumu Higuchi, Satoko Mihara, Sawitri Assangangkornchai, Manoj Sharma, Abdulla El Kashef, Patrick Ip, Michael Farrell, Emanuele Scafato, Natacha Carragher, and Vladimir Poznyak. "Gaming Disorder: Its Delineation as an Important Condition for Diagnosis, Management, and Prevention." Journal of Behavioral Addictions 6, no. 3 (2017): 271–279. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.6.2017.039

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