0
0
Despite its widespread popularity and legality, Gambling can cause harm to people’s lives. The risks of gambling can include addiction, financial loss, and family problems. Gambling can also send massive surges of dopamine through your brain, but these don’t motivate you to do the things you need to do, like work or sleep (Nature Human Behaviour, Vol 2, 2018). Over time, this can lead you to seek more and more pleasure from gambling activities, instead of from healthy activities, such as eating, exercising and spending time with friends.
The American Psychiatric Association defines Gambling as wagering something of value on an event whose outcome is determined at least partly by chance and for which there is a reasonable expectation of winning more money or goods than was invested. This includes games of skill where the chances of winning are not based on the player’s skill, but on the outcome of a random process, such as scratchcards, fruit machines, or betting with friends.
The definition of gambling includes several criteria, including the repeated unsuccessful attempts to control, cut back, or stop gambling; substantial losses incurred in the course of gambling that cause significant distress, anxiety, or depression; lying to family members, therapists, or others to conceal gambling activity; and committing illegal acts, such as forgery, fraud, theft, embezzlement, or embezzlement in order to finance gambling. Although there is consensus that pathological gambling should be considered an addictive disorder, there is disagreement about how to conceptualize, define, and measure it.
