Gambling has been a vital problem of many scientific researches all around the world. This phenomenon attracts millions of people who even do not guess how badly gambling influences their physical and mental health. According to statistical data, it turns out that gambling fully affects the human psyche, and it provides the impact as that one of a powerful narcotic substance and causes addiction. Gambling people necessarily need to be treated, because the scientists prove that the interest in casino, online games and slot machines provide such effects as depression, insanity, schizophrenia and other psychological disorders.
Gambling is a serious psychological problem. The desire to get new experience, extreme feelings of enthusiasm and excitement are typical for all people. Quite often, however, the need to experience these feelings through gambling becomes a habit. In this case, in order to avoid serious consequences, it is important not to let the problem go its own way and intervene in time to prevent further development of destructive addiction.
The problem of gambling has deep roots. Gambling has been a human companion since ancient times. Dice have been considered to be one of the first gambling activities all around the world. Then, there appeared a game of cards in China, which gradually spread throughout Europe. After that, the world fell under the influence of casino. In the nineteenth century, the first slot machine appeared in the United States. Over time, slot machines have become popular in many countries all around the world. At the same time, people began to get involved in all kinds of lotteries, bingo, and in the last fifteen years, the computer games and online games become the top gambling activities. As a result, an obsessive gambling activity has become an integral part of the human life.
According to the statistics data, about 3% of people suffer from gambling addiction in the modern world. And these are the people that need medical treatment and consulting of a psychiatrist, psychologist, sociologist, or other doctors depending on the kind of disorder acquired in the course of gambling activity.
Any human being can become a gambling addicted, no matter, who the gambler is, a man or a woman, a pensioner or a teenager. But different countries have their own characteristics of those dependent on the gambling. Thus, in the US, for example, gambling activities involve 80% of elderly people and only 4% of adolescents. In post-Soviet countries, mostly children and young people are addicted to gambling, but retirees do not suffer from gambling addiction.
First of all, gambling affects the physical health of a human being. First, it is only about the neurotic changes of the person, which arise because of the passion for gaming activity. These changes are characterized by the decrease of working capacity, depression, insomnia. Later on, gambling addiction results in the increased blood pressure, tachycardia occurs that leads to the development of pathologies of the gastrointestinal tract, in particular, gastric ulcer. It means that the autonomic nervous system of the person is unable to cope with the pressure, which arises in the course of the game.
The game is a kind of stress presupposed by the hormones released in the blood, such as epinephrine, norepinephrine, endorphins, enkephalin (the so-called happiness hormones). Man is continually under stress, which on the one hand, is an attractive state of the person, and on the other the other hand, it is a huge load on the cardiovascular and nervous systems, and the gastrointestinal tract (Kennedy).
The scientific researches provide the term ludomania for the psychological impact of gambling (Weinstock). This disorder is characterized by permanent engagement and increased time spent in the gambling activity. Gambling addiction leads to changing the range of interest, ousting the former motivations by the gaming ones, constant thinking about the games, and the predominance of imagining game combinations. Gamblers lose control over the ongoing situation which is expressed in the inability to stop the game after the big wins, and after permanent losses. The states of psychological discomfort, irritation, anxiety that develops in a relatively short period of time, a formidable desire to start the game again usually accompany the gambling addicted. Such states remind the state of abstinence acquired from substance abuse. Quite often, these states are accompanied by a headache, sleep disturbance, anxiety, depressed mood, loss of attention concentration.
Ludomania is characterized by a gradual increase of the frequency of participation in games, the desire to increasingly high risk that is presupposed by the recurring state of tension and the continuous desire to find the opportunity to participate in gambling activity. Gamblers usually suffer from a rapidly growing decline in the ability to resist temptation. This is reflected in the fact that, having decided once to give up gambling, the slightest provocation, for instance, meeting with old friends, talking about the games, the gambling establishment nearby, and so on, resume gambling dependence (Kennedy).
There are numerous examples in the history of development and formation of the gambling industry. An elderly woman from New Jersey, Patricia Demuara, became the world record holder, having played over 150 games in Atlantic City for more than four hours. She refused to say how much money she had spent on those games, but the witnesses stated that Demuara spent the whole weekend gambling in Atlantic City (Upfold).
So, gambling is an attractive activity, but it provides the negative impact on the human psyche. People lose a great amount of money, destroy their health, ruin the family relation, and even commit suicide. Gambling addiction has a great destructive power and quite often cannot be defeated by treatment.
Works Cited:
Kennedy, Robert F. The Baleful Influence of Gambling. Atlantic City: The Daily, 1952. Web. 25 Jul. 2016.
Upfold, Darryl, and Turner, Nigel. Gambling Treatment Outcome Study. London: Cambridge Mass, 2008. Web. 25 Jul. 2016.
Weinstock, Jeremiah, Ledgerwood, David, Modesto-Lowe, Vania, and Petry Nancy. Ludomania: cross-cultural examinations of gambling and its treatment. CT: University of Connecticut Health Center, 2008. Web. 25 Jul. 2016.
