4. Convergences in behavioral addiction policies

Behavioural addictions have been challenging policy-making and treatment responses all over the globe for two decades. Landmarks towards effective responses derived from addiction medicine or from obsessive-compulsive conceptual and structural frameworks. This year marks a milestone towards the implementation of their inclusion in the Addictive disorders spectrum, with ICD-11 being the gold standard in terms of treatment, monitoring, health statistics, and policy-making at national levels. The current talk aims to describe this journey by reviewing the literature and presenting national case studies. Our conclusion is that great cross-cultural differences in policy and treatment responses have been observed globally towards behavioural addictions. Different factors played major roles in shaping them, such as economics, the infrastructure of health systems and political contexts. Numerous challenges remain for nations over the globe to accurately consider the convergence between substance use disorders and behavioural disorders, from a global mental health perspective. The most pressing of them resides in the capacity building of care and public health professionals.