As opined by ‘Keeping the Score’, gambling does not always pose problems until one is obsessed with it. Even medicine.com acknowledges that gambling may become compulsive and associates it with the consequence of a mixture of natural weaknesses, thought processes and anxiety.

1. Monetary Setbacks

The Minnesota Institute of Public Health states that obsessed gamblers will find dubious ways to get a stake for gambling, even exhausting their credit cards’ limit, taking money against their life insurance policies, procuring loans or scrounging from other avenues. If these monetary burdens are immense, frequently insolvency follows.

2. Unemployment Results

Unemployment is another effect of obsessive gambling. Getting fired reflects on the gambler’s lack of functional ability to work, and enhances the monetary strain on compulsive gambling.

3. Inattention towards Children

An appraisal of the reports during a 14-month period of the Indiana’s State’s gaming commission by ‘Focus on the Family’ exposed that there were cases of 72 children being forgotten in casinos.

4. Fighting within homes

The mental stress which comes along from gambling causes fighting in the homes.
As per Focus on Family, records show that within three years of legalizing of gambling in Deadwood, South Dakota, there was an increase if felonies by 40 percent, in mistreatment of children by 42 percent, and incidents of physical beating and fighting in homes increased by 80 percent.

5. Separation of Couples

Addictive gambling very often leads to separation of couples. Focus on the Family report that the National Gambling Impact Study enumerated that the occurrence of lifetime separation among couples for compulsive and pathological gamblers respectively were noted at 39.5 percent and 53.5 percent, while it was 18.2 percent for the non-gamblers.

6. Physical Violence

Physical abuse frequently accompanies compulsive gambling. As per the Massachusetts Council for Compulsive gamblers 75% of all pathological gamblers are addicted to alcohol and 38% of such gamblers use drugs.

7. Law-breaking

Compulsive gamblers frequently become criminals to get money for their gambling. The Chautauqua Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Control maintain that scams, misappropriation of funds, falsification of documents and other forms of pilfering are regular offenses perpetuated by gamblers.

8. Character transformation

As gambling activities flourish, the character of the gambler can transform. The Minnesota Institute of Public Health states that becoming secretive and having fluctuations in dispositions are the main regular changes.

9. Losing Confidence

The Chautauqua Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Council opine that compulsive gamblers also face the problem of losing their confidence. This in turn increases the troubles of the gambler.

10. Taking one’s life

Focus on Family report that nearly 20 percent of addictive gamblers will attempt to take their own life, while 10 per cent of their spouse will also attempt suicide.

Also read Taking a Critical Look at the State Response to Slot Machine Gambling

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