LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Gambling: Pathological Gambling
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The American Psychiatric Association reports that 6 percent of teens who have tried gambling became pathological gamblers. Researchers at the International Center for Youth Gambling Problems and High Risk Behaviors at McGill University in Montreal identify increased criminal activity, strained family relationships and depression as consequences of gambling problems among youth. (An estimated 30 percent of pathological gamblers attempt suicide.)
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The profits from government gaming operations are almost $13 billion nationally, but the costs of gambling addiction are not known. Some of these could be quantified, including medical care, policing, courts, prisons, social assistance and business losses. However, no simple dollar figure can measure the devastation to the lives of those affected by pathological gambling.
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Recent statewide surveys confirm gambling percentages are increasing among Missouri college students. More adolescents report that the primary reasons for gambling are for excitement and enjoyment, and not for money. Teens are three times more likely to become pathological gamblers than adults are.
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Extreme cases of problem gambling may cross over into the realm of mental disorders. Pathological gambling was recognized as a psychiatric disorder in the DSM-III, but the criteria were significantly reworked based on large-scale studies and statistical methods for the DSM-IV. As defined by American Psychiatric Association, pathological gambling is an impulse control disorder that is a chronic and progressive mental illness.
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For this reason, early education about the dangers of gambling addiction and information on how to get help for the problem is vital for preventing the disease. Problem and pathological gamblers across age groups ... use tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and other drugs more often than do other groups.
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Pathological Gambling