Mike Blake / Reuters
The World Health Organization has formally recognized the compulsive playing of videogames as a new mental-health condition. In its latest revision to an international disease classification manual, the health agency said classifying “gaming disorder” as its own unique condition will “serve a public-health purpose for countries to be better prepared to identify this issue.” Shekhar Saxena, director of WHO’s mental-health department, said the move was in response to scientific evidence and “the demand for treatment in many parts of the world.” Henrietta Bowden-Jones, a spokeswoman for the behavioral-addictions group at Britain’s Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “We come across parents who are distraught, not only because they’re seeing their child drop out of school, but because they’re seeing an entire family structure fall apart.”