Problem gambling is a well-defined problem that's been widely researched around the world. In this session, we're going to look at what we mean by problem gambling, its definition, evidence of how prevalent it is around the world, and compare the incidence of problem gambling with other related problems such as abuse of alcohol and other substances. The first thing to decide is what we mean by gambling becoming a problem. That does depend to some extent on one's ethical position in the first place. For some people, ethically speaking all gambling is a problem and therefore it applies to absolutely everything. However, many people believe that gambling in moderation is just an innocent pleasure. The question, when does the extent of the pursuit of pleasure by an individual, when does it start to become a problem? This is the issue that many people around the world, many academics have tried to study. Many doctors, medical researchers. The most popular way of diagnosing whether you have or whether you are a problem gambler is something called DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM version five, the fifth edition which was published in 2013. So these nine elements are all meant to be part of possessing or part of problem gambling indicators that you're having a problem with gambling and technically you're defined as being a problem gambler. The problem gambling is leading to clinically significant impairment or distress if you exhibit four or more of these symptoms. Let's go through them one by one. The first a, the need to gambling with increasing amounts of money in order to achieve the desired excitement. If you're always having to raise the entry as it were in order to enjoy the gambling as much, that's a problem. If you become restless or irritable when you attempt to cut down or stop gambling. Third, if you've made repeated unsuccessful attempts to control gambling, but obviously by implication you keep lapsing back into gambling. Fourth, are you preoccupied with gambling? Are you thinking about it all the time as all of your decision-making centered around how to gamble? That's clearly a significant problem. Fifth, when you gamble, is it something that you do when you're feeling distressed? When actually you're feeling like you have problems, is that you're gambling because you think they will alleviate those distresses. Six, when you lose money gambling, do you go back the next day or soon after in order to, as it were get even, trying to thinking that if you just gamble more, you'll get back all the money that you've lost. Seventh, do you tell lies in order to conceal the extent of your involvement with gambling? Are you deceiving the people around you? Eighth, has your gambling put at risk any significant relationship in your life? Has it put your Job at risk or your education or a career opportunity? Is gambling getting in the way of your day-to-day life? Ninth, do you look to others to lend you money in order to prop up your gambling habit. If any one of these is true, you should probably think that there's a problem with your gambling. But certainly, if four or more of them are true, then it seems very clear that this is causing some distress in your life. Bear in mind this is not the only way to define problem gambling, but it is one of the most popular ways of defining it, and it gives you a very good sense of when gambling becomes a significant problem above and beyond any morals feeling you have about the desirability of gambling in general. Problem gambling is often associated with the illusion of control. The illusion of control is the belief that you can control things which actually you can't. This is actually a widespread problem and by no means restricted to gambling activities. For example, doctors have been known to display the illusion of control in many cases when diagnosing illness, traders in financial markets who think that they can control the direction of stock market prices. Athletes are particularly prone to this thinking that they can make things happen when they can't necessarily do so, and of course, sports fans themselves who believe that particular forms of behavior, will be more likely to guarantee a win to superstitious behavior that we often see in sports fans. To recognize when you are suffering from the illusion of control, what you really need to do is think about whether the activity you're involved in is governed at all by probabilities or whether it's deterministic. Deterministic relationships can be controlled but if there is an element of probability or chance in determining outcomes, then you should not think that you have complete control over the activity. Problem gamblers clearly should never think that they are in a deterministic activity. It is clearly an activity where chance plays a significant role. Therefore, it's a clear mark of problem gambling if you cannot see that very basic fact.
