A new report by public health officers has distressingly revealed that about 6% of the total Oregon eighth-graders have, at time or another, indulged in potentially deadly "chocking games".

The game, among other names, is also known as blackout game, pass-out game and space monkey, and involves trying to deliberately strangle oneself or someone else with either bare hands or some kind of a scarf or noose, in order to achieve a state of euphoria for some time.

"We are just beginning to understand this behavior. We know that there are a significant number of kids who have participated and it has high awareness among youth -- one in three youths know about this behavior", said lead researcher Sarah Ramowski, who is an Adolescent Health Policy & Assessment Specialist in the Oregon Department of Health.

For the sake of study, data was collected from nearly 11,000 eighth graders from 114 schools, and some 7,800 had answered a question about strangulation. It was then discovered that almost 1 in 3 children had heard about someone playing the game, and about 3% had helped someone. 6% said that they had participated in the game themselves.

Researchers discovered that children from rural setting were more likely to participate, as compared to those in urban settings.