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But what about computers, smartphones or the Internet more broadly? Proposals for Internet addiction have been advanced for possible inclusion in the DSM-V. In these cases, a similar dependence on the substance abuse pattern persists, as well as suspicions about the legitimacy of withdrawal and tolerance as diagnostic criteria. The WHO told me that she had begun to evaluate the public health consequences of the excessive use of computers, smartphones and the Internet. in 2014, in response to the concerns of his community. But despite these concerns, gambling disorder has become the only "clinically recognizable and clinically significant syndrome" linked to the broader category of computer and Internet.
Some researchers wonder if WHO could be under pressure to codify gambling disorder. In 2017, an article in the journal Occupational Psychology: Research and Practice argues that two members of the advisory group WHO Geoffrey Reed and Vladimir Poznyak, felt political pressure to identify gambling disorders, particularly in Member States where the consequences of excessive online gambling were particularly extreme.
Christopher J. Ferguson, a clinical psychologist at Stetson University and one of the article's coauthors, showed me emails from Reed and Poznyak. "Everything does not depend on me," Reed wrote to Ferguson in August 2016, "and we have been under tremendous pressure, especially from Asian countries, to include it."
coercion. "There was no pressure or communication to the WHO Secretariat from any government with a suggestion to consider the inclusion of gambling disorder in ICD-11 , "a spokesman told me – while acknowledging that constituency members have repeatedly drawn attention to their" concerns about the health consequences of gambling behavior " .
But it is logical that WHO respond to the lobbying of its affiliates. If the overuse of games or smartphones falls under the behavior of then of course, this behavior will necessarily vary according to region, nation, culture and other social conditions. To a certain extent, all diseases require social construction – they must be recognized by an organization like the WHO in a bureaucratic artifact like ICD in order to be diagnosed, treated, managed and paid. But unlike a viral infection or an autoimmune disease, a behavioral disorder is particularly sensitive to the varied social contexts in which the behavior takes place.
This is one of the counterpoints that critics of gambling disorder often raise. What about people who dance excessively or become obsessed with tanning salons, or who spend hours tapping and sliding on Instagram or even those who read novels – source of panic in the 18th century – or look at football at the expense of their social and professional life? If the goal of DSM or ICD is to help people, and if only a very small percentage of players (or dancers, or tanners, or instagrammers, or novel readers, or football fans) are forced to the point to overuse pathological, and if what is pathological in the first place is subjective, then why not create a broader Behavioral Overworking Disorder that could apply to anything, without prejudice?
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