The parents of a teenage son who committed
suicide just over
a year ago claim that their son become addicted to the massively
multiplayer
online role-playing game, World of
Warcraft. They believe that as a
result of this addiction he took his own life. Now these parents are
suing World of WarCraft developers Blizzard
Entertainment, blaming the
game developers for the tragic loss of their son.
The details of just how many hours this teen had been
playing World of Warcraft prior to
his death has not yet been published.
Just what would constitute an addiction is hard to quantify. The
generally accepted medical definition of
an addiction is a habitual psychological and physiological dependence
on a
substance or practice beyond one's voluntary control. So using this
definition as a guide we could
assume he had no control over how often he sat down to play the online
role
playing game.
Looking at a common addiction many people can relate to,
smoking. Nobody would claim that the
actual act of smoking could lead to anybody’s death. Rather it is the
chemicals being inhaled
while smoking that have been linked to various diseases leading to a
potential premature
death. Following this same logic we
could then say that spending large amounts of your day playing
World of Warcraft could not kill
you. So the real problem in this case
most be something else.
Examining suicide we should look at what really causes
someone to take their own life. While a
lot more research on the subject is still needed, it is believed that
some type
of psychiatric disorder, depression being the most common is the
leading cause
of suicide. If properly diagnosed most
mental health problems can be treated and controlled. The difficulty is
for people to realize that
they have a problem and to go and seek treatment. The unfortunate
stigma still attached to
mental health problems leads many to go without getting treatment for
what
could be a highly treatable disease.
Looking back at the case at hand, we can see that a teen
playing World of Warcraft too much
could definitely be a potential sign that something is wrong. People
who have difficulty dealing with
reality or interacting with people are two possible signs of a mental
health
disease. So every parent should be aware
of this, and if their children are using computer games as a way to
withdraw
from friends and family they should definitely seek profession medical
advice,
it just might save their child’s life.
|
