If you love video games and spend a lot of your time on it, it might be time for a reality check. The World Health Organization has announced that compulsive game playing is a mental health condition. Gaming disorder features as one of the addictive disorders listed in the latest edition of the WHO’s disease classification manual.

The WHO released its new International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), which had been over a decade in the making, on 18 June.

The ICD identifies health trends and statistics worldwide, and contains around 55,000 unique codes for injuries, diseases and causes of death, providing a common language that allows health professionals to share health information across the globe.

Once a disorder is included in ICD, countries take it into account while planning public health strategies and monitoring trends.

READ | What is gaming disorder? Do you need to worry?

According to the WHO, a gaming disorder has three major characteristics that are similar to substance use disorders and gambling disorder.

“One is that the gaming behavior takes precedence over other activities to the extent that other activities are taken to the periphery,” a CNN report quotes Dr Vladimir Poznyak of the WHO’s Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse as saying.

Another condition is “impaired control over gaming”, while the third is continuation of gaming in spite of negative consequences such as disturbed sleep patterns, diet problems, and lack of physical activity.

The WHO, however, estimates that gaming disorder affects only a “small proportion of people”, and the pattern of behaviour must be present in someone for at least 12 months before it can be officially diagnosed as a disorder.

“It cannot be just an episode of (a) few hours or (a) few days,” Poznyak warned.

In ICD-11, the latest edition of the WHO’s disease classification manual, gaming disorder has been added to the section on addictive disorders.

The ICD-11 has a few new chapters too, including one on traditional medicine. Though a large number of people use traditional medicine worldwide, it never figured in the WHO disease classification manual. Another new chapter is on sexual health, which brings together conditions that were previously categorised in other ways or described differently. For example, gender incongruence that was listed under mental health conditions earlier will be now covered under sexual health.

ICD-11 will be presented at the World Health Assembly in May 2019 for adoption by Member States, and come into effect on 1 January, 2022. The release provides an advance preview to allow countries to plan how to use the new version, prepare translations, and train health professionals all over the country.

According to the WHO, the ICD team in its headquarters had received over 10 000 proposals for revisions.

Besides providing significant improvements on the previous versions, the ICD-11 is for the first time completely electronic.

“A key principle in this revision was to simplify the coding structure and electronic tooling – this will allow health care professionals to more easily and completely record conditions,” says Dr Robert Jakob, Team Leader, Classifications Terminologies and Standards, WHO.