RSPH | RSPH Gambling Health Alliance

Causes

Often, many things contribute to a gambling addiction, including biological, genetic and environmental factor.

Addicted gamblers may notice they feel desperate for money, get a thrill or high from gambling, seek the social status of a successful gambler, and have other mood and behavior disorders that contribute to or result from their gambling addiction.

Gambling Companies Sponsoring Sport 

Interviews With Providers of Services

Structured interview schedules were developed in order to ensure consistency of questions. Questions focused around knowledge and experiences of gambling harms; approaches to identifying and assisting individuals; and signposting and referring. A range of service providers were recruited to participate in the interviews. All participants worked for organizations that deal with homelessness, drug and alcohol use, domestic abuse, and financial debt issues. All services were Third/Voluntary Sector organizations and were geographically representative of the population under investigation. Twenty individuals from 11 organizations were recruited with respondents including a CEO, an Operations officer, Counselors, Debt Advisors and Caseworkers.

4. Relief and Escape Gamblers

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that addictions commonly form when people engage in behaviors, like using drugs or gambling, to fulfill an emotional need. Relief and escape gamblers may only seek out gambling as a way to manage their depression, anxiety or other causes of stress.

Escape gamblers may be pretty unsuccessful at winning, though. Due to their emotional state, their decision making and judgment can be poor. Relief and escape gamblers could lose huge amounts of money in a short amount of time and feel higher stress, anxiety and depression in the long-term.

Relief and escape gamblers benefit from expanded coping skills to address their emotional needs.

Asia[edit]

• 3.42101.792 Genting Highlands, Malaysia — the only integrated casino resort in the country
• 15.49888973.8273 Goa, India — the only place in the country where gambling is legal
• 22.27114.174 Hong Kong, China — the only legal gambling is on horse racing
• 22.1667113.555 Macau, China — now the world's highest-volume gambling venue
• 1.3103.86 Singapore — has horse racing, lotteries and football (soccer) betting, as well as two casinos

Europe[edit]

• Baltic Sea ferries
• London, England
• Baden-Baden, Germany
• Monaco
• Northern Cyprus
• Sweden: Casinos in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, as well as tables and machines at nightclubs around the country, and several horse-race tracks
• Most cities in the Balkans
• Norway: Gambling is strictly regulated and mostly boils down to lotteries and sports (including horse race) betting. Gambling online on foreign sites is illegal.

Caribbean[edit]

• Paradise Island, Bahamas

Study parameters

Of the 17 publications meeting inclusion criteria, seven appeared as peer-reviewed journal articles, three were preprints and seven were online reports which did not appear to have been peer-reviewed. Table 1 provides a description of each study, and Table 2 summarizes the findings concerning the COVID-19 impact on gambling. The surveys were conducted in a range of western middle- and upper-income countries. About half were designed to be representative of the adult population (n = 9, 53%), and five of these weighted their sample based upon demographic characteristics. A number of surveys recruited the adult population of recent gamblers (n = 3, 18%) or subpopulations of gamblers – online gamblers (n = 1, 6%); land-based venue gamblers (n = 1, 6%); regular online sports bettors (n = 1, 6%). Two studies assessed special populations, including elite athletes and individuals recovered from substance use disorder. The studies most commonly utilized existing online panels or MTurk for recruitment (n = 9, 53%). Two samples used the customer databases of online gambling providers. Two samples used multiple recruitment methods, including social media, previous research participants, and participants recruited by other participants (snowball method).

Table 1 - Parameters of studies assessing COVID-19 impact on gambling

Table 2 - Results of studies assessing COVID-19 impact on gambling

All 17 were online surveys. The majority was cross-sectional assessments (n = 11, 65%) and remainder was longitudinal in that they had collected earlier gambling data for participants (n = 6, 35%). Most of the cross-sectional survey reports were silent on whether a subsequent follow-up of participants was planned. All the surveys provided specific data collection dates that aligned with the first lockdown period occurring from March to May 2020. Surveys in New Zealand [40] and Australia [26] also reported the results of a follow-up assessment to describe changes post lockdown. The Fluharty study in Great Britain [29▪] reported an assessment conducted in early August, which was described as an easing of lockdown.

Gambling behaviour data were collected in a variety of ways in the available surveys. One study uniquely used gambling expenditure data from an online provider. This type of behavioural data is more accurate than retrospective self-report, although it is limited in that it does not necessarily reflect all of an individual's informal gambling or gambling with other providers. All other studies relied on self-report. A number of surveys assessed gambling engagement for each type of gambling available locally using structured questions. Reports assessing recent gambling have previously been found to have good reliability [42]. A number of the cross-sectional studies used parallel questions to obtain a description of the individual's typical gambling in the time prior (e.g., 6, 12 months) to the pandemic. These reports are more subject to memory and other biases. Three longitudinal studies had self-reports from earlier time periods using the same assessment questions and, as such, assessed changes over time.

Finally, a number of surveys assessed the perception of change in gambling versus assessing actual change (e.g., did your gambling increase, decrease or stay the same?). These questions are likely to be the least reliable and valid of the options as memory is possibly influenced by popular assumptions about the impact of the pandemic. Ten of the 17 studies incorporated a measure of problem gambling severity into their survey, in all cases the Problem Gambling Severity Index [43], which is widely used in prevalence studies.