The Social Impacts of Gambling

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Gambling

Gambling involves the wagering of something of value on a random event with the intent of winning. It includes games like blackjack, poker, and sports betting, as well as lottery tickets, scratch-offs, DIY investing, and more. The act of gambling triggers the brain’s release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that makes us feel excited and motivated to win.

When studying gambling impacts, it is important to consider the full range of both positive and negative effects. This is especially true for social impacts, which can be hard to quantify and have tended to receive less attention in economic costing studies of gambling. These include personal, interpersonal, and community/society level impacts (Fig. 1). Personal impacts include changes in gamblers’ financial situations, as well as the indirect impacts of gambling on their family members and friends. Interpersonal and community/society impacts are nonmonetary and affect those outside of the gambler, such as quality of life and social cohesion.

In the past, psychiatric researchers and clinicians often framed the behavioral phenomenon of pathological gambling in terms of compulsion rather than addiction. However, in a move that was hailed as a landmark in the field of psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association moved pathological gambling from the section on impulse control disorders to the one on addictions in its most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The change reflects the growing recognition that people with compulsive gambling problems have an illness that can be treated just like any other substance abuse problem.