Volume 8 Issue 8 August, 2017
Online Gaming, Suicide and Mental Health
Online gaming addictions share similarities with other substance addiction at molecular, neurobiological and behavioral levels. Games are played for pleasure and happiness. Due to technological revolutions cell phone and online gaming have taken a big boost in last few years targeting mainly the younger generation. Online gaming is at its peak in Russia, China, Japan and Korea and India is slowly joining these countries. Now a day’s India is becoming more digitalized mainly for public benefits. Due to less cost of internet usage, easy availability and accessibility, the problem associated with it like online gaming addiction is also accompanying. Some studies have shown that there is a significant association with self harm behavior and internet usage. The role of media to reject fake news related to internet gaming than to promote healthy news is very important in current scenario and also the role and responsibility of parents towards children is shown to be scarce which has been seen in “Blue whale game”. There is urgent need for the role of health professionals to investigate more to help the public to come out this problem of online gaming addiction. If intervention is not started at this point of time then we have to witness establishment of “digital detoxification” and recovery centers in near future. In view of suicide prevention day on September 10th, it’s
everyone’s responsibility to know the good and bad of internet usage and prevent suicide in relation to online gaming.
MVJ Medical College & Research Hospital, Bengaluru
