Toward the Inclusion of Gaming Disorder in ICD-11
In this 2017 editorial in Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, Susumu Higuchi, writing ahead of the World Health Organization's ICD-11 release, argues for formally including gaming disorder as a diagnostic category. Higuchi draws on the clinical case his Kurihama Medical and Addiction Center had already been building since 2011 — a growing caseload of patients whose gaming had become compulsive and functionally disabling — and frames a WHO classification as a needed step for consistent diagnosis, treatment planning, and public-health monitoring across countries. He acknowledges debate within the field over whether the evidence base was mature enough for formal inclusion but argues the clinical need outweighed that uncertainty. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as Higuchi's own public argument, addressed directly to fellow clinicians and researchers, for the WHO classification decision his clinic's caseload had already anticipated.
Higuchi, Susumu. "Toward the Inclusion of Gaming Disorder in ICD-11." Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 71, no. 7 (2017): 423–424. https://doi.org/10.1111/pcn.12398