Sharpening the Focus on Gaming Disorder
This 2019 feature in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, reported by journalist Gary Humphreys, profiles Susumu Higuchi's work at Kurihama Medical and Addiction Center alongside a Swiss addiction specialist, framing both as case studies in the WHO's effort to define 'gaming disorder' for ICD-11. Higuchi describes his patient caseload as mostly male and often students who had dropped out of school, and says gaming can be harder to address than substance use because internet access is so pervasive. The piece also cites a Japanese government survey reporting a large rise in adults with broader internet addiction between 2013 and 2018, and notes Higuchi's support for WHO screen-time guidance for young children. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a direct, on-record account of Higuchi's clinical experience and his view of gaming disorder's growing public-health weight, published in the WHO's own peer-reviewed bulletin.
Higuchi reported that of 269 patients then being seen for internet addiction at his center, 241 had gaming disorder as their main presenting issue, and 215 of those 241 were male; almost three-quarters of all patients were students.
The article cites a national survey estimating about 1.82 million Japanese men age 20 and older living with internet addiction in 2018 — almost three times the 2013 figure — and about 1.3 million women, up from roughly 0.5 million in 2013.
Humphreys, Gary. "Sharpening the Focus on Gaming Disorder." Bulletin of the World Health Organization 97, no. 6 (2019): 382–383. https://doi.org/10.2471/BLT.19.020619