Recreational Gambling:

by Jerry "Jet" Whittaker

February 15, 2006

Introduction: 

Over the past decade, gambling has become an important recreational activity in the United States and also in 1975, Nevada was the only state that offered casino gambling, thirteen states had lotteries, and 68% of adults had gambled. However by 1997, all but two states that are Hawaii and Utah had ratified some form of commercial gambling and 86 percent of the North American adult population had participated in games of chance. Then in 1997 consumers in America were spending more than $50.9 billion gambling and for that more than one of every ten dollars spent on leisure activities was spent gambling, with more money being spent on gambling than was being spent on tickets to sporting events, movies, theme parks, video games, and recorded music combined. 

Study of recreational gambling: 

Prior studies have found high rates of alcohol use and abuse or dependence, depression, anxiety, bankruptcy, and incarceration associated with recreational gambling. 

According to a Yale study in the American Journal of Psychiatry, unlike younger recreational gamblers who show high rates of alcohol use and abuse, depression, anxiety, bankruptcy and incarceration, there appears to be an association between recreational gambling and good health among elderly persons. Although the underlying reasons remain hypothetical, proposed reasons included the increased activity, socialization, and cognitive stimulation that are related to engaging in gambling yet such a mechanism would be consistent with the literature on healthy aging, which indicates that more socially and cognitively active elders are, in general, healthier.

The impact:

The Gambling Impact and Behavior Study by professor Desai and her colleagues in the Yale study in the American Journal of Psychiatry, involved telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 2,417 adults and they compared the health status of recreational gamblers who had gambled with persons who had not gambled. Their health which was self-report was measured according to alcohol use, abuse and dependence, substance abuse and dependence, depression, mental health treatment, subjective general health, incarceration and bankruptcy where they also compared gamblers between 18-64 years old with gamblers 65 and older.

They said it is important to continue to monitor gambling behaviors in older adults since the activity can become highly addictive and also said older gamblers tend to favor non-strategic games, such as the lottery, bingo, keno, and slot machines that are particularly addictive also, older gamblers are more likely to be living on fixed incomes and the effects of gambling could be financially devastating to them.

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