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Gambling: Pathological Gambling
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Pathological Gambling recognized as Addictive Behavior by American Psychiatric Association (Listed in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). American Medical Association (Res. 430) lists socio-medical costs already at $40 billion in 1994 and increasing.
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Recent research has ... shown that college students are more likely to develop a gambling addiction. Pathological gambling, as it is sometimes called, occurs in 1 to 2 percent of the adult population in the United States, while the rates climb to 4 to 8 percent for college students. Wexler said a parent recently explained how a student stole $2,500 to gamble with. Wexler knows the story all too well as he started gambling when he was 7 or 8-years old. By 14, he was gambling with a bookie and by 21, he was stealing to support his gambling addiction. According to the Pennsylvania study, weekly poker games among male high school and college students increased 84 percent from 2003 to 2004.
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For most people, gambling is recreational. However, for some people, gambling leads to debilitating problems resulting in harm. Problem gambling means participation in any form of gambling activity to the extent that it creates a negative consequence to the gambler, the gambler's family, place of employment, or community. This includes patterns of gambling and subsequent related behaviors that compromise, disrupt, or damage personal, family, educational, financial, or vocational interests. Pathological gambling is a progressive mental disorder meeting the diagnostic criteria set forth by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition.
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Sadly, children are negatively affected by gambling addiction in several ways. Physical and emotional abandonment is a very real phenomenon. “Casino kids” are left in cars or on the periphery of the gambling action while their parents gamble, or may spend hours with babysitters... missing the nurturing they need. Children of pathological gamblers are typically abused verbally, mentally and physically by the gambler, and often even more so by the co-dependent spouse. Finally, these children are much more likely to develop gambling addiction than their peers.
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"......A comprehensive study of problem gambling in California finds that 3.7 percent of the state population has a lifetime problem or are pathological gamblers. That means 750,000 to 1 million Californians have serious gambling issues. But the numbers may be under reporting the problem, says Bruce Roberts, executive director of the nonprofit California Council on Problem Gambling. The study did not poll minors, and Roberts believes there are more like 1.5 million Californians with gambling problems.
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Problem gambling (ludomania) is an urge to gamble despite harmful negative consequences or a desire to stop. The term is preferred to [C]ompulsive gambling among many professionals, as few people described by the term experience true compulsions in the clinical sense of the word. Problem gambling often is defined by whether harm is experienced by the gambler or others, rather than by the gambler's behavior. Severe problem gambling may be diagnosed as clinical pathological gambling if the gambler meets certain criteria.
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Pathological Gambling