World Of Warcraft, Could It Be Killing Our Teens
Mark MacKay

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.


About The Author: Mark MacKay is an avid online gamer,
including World of Warcraft and also the creator of the World
of Warcraft Gold Price List Guide, a web site setup to help WoW
players find the cheapest place to buy their gold. You can visit
Mark's site at http://www.world-of-warcraft-gold.com