How much time do your children take in playing video games? 1 hour? 2 hours? 3hours? Or more than that. Children are more addicted to video games and virtual life than playing out in the park with friends or enjoying real life experiences. And if we’re being honest, adults are even worse in this situation.
Let’s talk about adults who are stressed out, who are in depression, who are not able to cope with their work, are exhausted, are not keeping themselves mentally and physically healthy.
World Health Organization defines ‘Gaming Disorder’ and ‘Burnout’
Gaming Disorder
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WHO has defined gaming disorder in ICD-11 (International Classification Of Diseases as a pattern that is characterized by control over gaming, giving priority to gaming over other activities to such extent that they become their important aspect over other daily activities and continuing even having negative consequences. Gaming addiction also leads to mood disorders such as anxiety, depression, stress.
Gaming disorder has been included in ICD-11 to recognize it as a clinically significant syndrome when the nature of the pattern of behavior is intensified that it results in impairment in personal, social, family or occupational functioning. Gaming addiction also makes a person inactive, as they are not working out physically, not keen on keeping themselves healthy which makes the person obese and suffers from sleep problems and other health issues as cited on Wikipedia.
Burnout
Burnout is another disorder that has been classified in 1CD-11. It is considered an occupational phenomenon but not as a mental condition. It is considered a syndrome that results from work-related stress and which are not managed successfully.
This disorder claimed by WHO should not be taken into consideration to describe other areas of life as it is known to be associated with the occupational context.
Issues that need to be sorted
Violent games have affected a lot in children. Children playing such games likely to have increased aggressive thoughts, behaviors and have shown violent behaviors towards their parents.
In June 2018 World Health Organization declared addiction to gaming as a mental health disorder, National Institute of Media and Family claimed through their study that children’s addiction to video games increases depression and anxiety level in them.
APA (American Psychological Association) that there is direct correlation between excessive video games and aggression among children, but many organization have considered their study misleading, while some believe that kid’s aggression level gets worsen due to game’s nature, children are rewarded when they commit crimes in video games which makes them more violent. Not only that children often misbehave and become violent towards the female, but why? As female characters are shown as weak in many video games or sexually proactive which leads to a regressive mindset in children and starts becoming sexist when they grow up. It is not necessary that all video games are bad, there are games that involve sports games but kids are more interested in violent ones. There are some stereotypical things when it comes to video games, people feel that only boys play violent games, no that’s not true even girls are playing video games and they are also becoming aggressive.
Talked about children, now what about adults, are they maintaining their lives, keeping themselves healthy, taking care of their mental health. Don’t think so!!
Working adults are nowadays suffering from BURNOUT, which is a known phenomenon that is receiving a lot of attention in media as most of the adults are working in stressful conditions that they get completely exhausted and are in no mood to work. Some employers pressurize their employees to work dreadful conditions, sometimes they give the order to complete some work within a limited time period. Employees don’t have a choice but to work so that their salaries don’t get reduce or they are in fear of losing out the promotion or even their jobs. But later on what happens, they feel exhausted after working so much, anxiety levels start increasing, they start feeling depressed, they don’t feel like working.
They start becoming exhausted, frustrated and also sometimes creates problems in their relationships.
What needs to be done?
A healthy workplace should be maintained, workload should be reduced and specifically working hours can also be reduced so that not only the employees but also the employers maintain their mental health, developing positive aspects of the work and encouraging and motivating employees would not only lead to their better healthy lifestyle but also would work in full enthusiasm.
In every workplace irrespective of the type, every week there should be workshops or events that address mental health issues and to promote better mental health environment so that workers and employers can develop a positive work environment in which employees would not have to suffer from burnout due to exhaustion and stress and would happily and excitedly come to office without any stress.
