Mental Illness Refers to a Wide Range of Mental Health Conditions

Mental illness refers to a wide range of mental health conditions — disorders that affect your mood, thinking and behavior. Examples of mental illness include depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders and addictive behaviors. Many people have mental health concerns from time to time. But a mental health concern becomes a mental illness when ongoing signs and symptoms cause frequent stress and affect your ability to function.

Signs and symptoms of mental illness can vary, depending on the disorder, circumstances and other factors. Mental illness symptoms can affect emotions, thoughts and behaviors. The study conducted by the Global Burden of Disease in 2018 reported that 3.3 million Filipinos suffer from mental disorders, with suicide rates in 2.5 males and 1.7 females per 100,000. The World Health Organization, however, thinks that the numbers could be just a portion of the actual problem, especially because in a Catholic country like ours, talking about mental health creates a stigma among Filipinos, thus suicide incidents could be under-reported. The Philippines has the highest number of depressed people in Southeast Asia. The National Statistics Office reported that mental illness is the third most common form of disability in the country.

One of the causes of mental illness is the video gaming misuse. Gaming disorder is a pattern of gaming behavior characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.

Gaming is strongly preferred over other activities, the gamer does not stop even when there are negative consequences like doing badly at work, compulsive gaming strains the gamer’s life or relationships, lack of appetite and sleep, dehydration, excessive exposure to radiation and all this has