USA Casino Expert is How Does Gambling Lead To Poverty an independent community of gambling industry professionals founded in 2017. The main goal of our How Does Gambling Lead To Poverty team is to provide recommendations on the choice of safe, reliable and trusted online casinos, welcome bonuses and gambling for players from the United States. Jan 15, 2015 Gambling and poverty Of slots and sloth. Yet a new study in the American Indian Law Journal suggests that growing tribal gaming revenues can make poverty worse. The study looks at two dozen. Seniors with impaired cognition may make poor decisions and have a reduced aversion to risk. Depression and loneliness are common among the elderly, and gambling is one way to cope. Gambling marketers gear their efforts toward the elderly, offering perks to meet their needs.

Approximately 10 million people in the United States live with a gambling addiction problem. A gambling addiction occurs when a person continues to gamble despite negative effects that may impact their finances, relationships, or well-being. Gambling addiction involves compulsions to seek out gambling, betting, and wagering, and the end result can be devastating for the gambler as well as his or her family.¹

People who struggle with a gambling or shopping problem often hide their issues out of shame and a desire for secrecy.

This often delays recovery and treatment and allows a gambling addiction to lead to other serious effects, including loss of jobs, failed relationships, and severe debt. Problem gambling is often associated with mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, and mood disorders. Gambling problems don’t just affect mental health. People who have struggled with gambling benefit greatly from treatment and often also need family counseling and financial coaching to fully recover.

Christine’s Story

“You have to do the work in all areas of your recovery, including your finances. I chose to not do all the work necessary for a well-rounded recovery. Even though I was no longer actively gambling, my financial and legal troubles told me I still needed to work with a gambling addiction specialist. After my troubles occurred, I worked with a specialist for a year while I went through the legal mess I created.

“Now that I have reached eight and a half years in recovery from gambling addiction and alcohol abuse, I know it is my job, my duty, to be of recovery service to others. Life today is good!”

— Read Christine C.’s story and more at www.HeroesInRecovery.com

>>> READ THIS NEXT:What Is Integrated Treatment Really?

The Cost of Problem Gambling in Your Community

Studies have shown that more than $6 billion has been lost each year to gambling addictions. This problem is far-reaching and can cause both individuals and companies to panic and act in ways they would not normally act.¹

Gambling addictions also place a severe hardship on prison systems, public assistance programs, and legal systems. There are many consequences of gambling addictions that result in community economic costs.

Some community gambling addiction dangers include:

Increased rates of unemployment
Bankruptcy
Fraud and check forgery

Forced home sales
Increased alcohol and drug abuse
Poor mental and physical health of individuals and families

How Gambling Impacts the Individual and Family

While the addicted person will definitely suffer during a gambling addiction, that person’s family will also face challenges. The stress that the problem gambler experiences may cause irritable behavior, secrecy, and arguments. Calls from creditors and bill collectors erode relationships. Financial strains impact all family members, and strained relationships make the experience difficult for even extended family members, friends, and colleagues.

The children of gambling addicts also suffer in many ways, including:

Emotional neglect and abandonment (and even physical abandonment) when one parent is consumed in an addiction.
Stressed and irritable parents may lash out at children angrily, and even if they do not, these children can sense their parents’ tension.
Children of people with gambling addiction are at higher risk of experiencing their own addictions later in life.

If You Can’t Stop Gambling, Your Life Will Be Forever Changed

The effects of a gambling addiction are often quite clear. A large number of people who engage in compulsive gambling will use credit cards and debit cards to pay casinos or internet gambling organizations. If you engage in problem gambling, you will most likely incur debt, damage your relationships, and lose sight of your goals in life.

There are many ways that an untreated gambling addiction can change your life.

Family problems are very common. Almost all compulsive gamblers around the world have issues at home with their family because of their addiction.
Financial devastation is unavoidable. People with a gambling addiction will go to extreme measures to get money to gamble. Many people eventually resort to stealing, taking out large loans, or other desperate means that are out-of-character.
Job loss is very high among gambling addicts. Gambling addiction may lead you to miss work, or come to work distracted. Gambling addictions will interfere with work relations, promotions, and employment.

No matter how bad a gambling addiction has become, it is possible to turn things around. Call us for help today at 269-280-4673.

Quyen Truong still gets a cozy feeling when she sees a hand of cards.

It reminds her of family and traditions as a refugee from Vietnam who arrived in the U.S. in late 1990. Aunts, uncles and cousins in Connecticut — among the Southeast Asian refugees who resettled here in waves after the Vietnam War — would get together on weekends with rolls of quarters, nickels, pennies and dimes.

Card games lasted late into the night over several courses of traditional Vietnamese food. Children rooted for their parents.

And it was an honor, “a big deal,” said Truong, 35, a health care advocate in Hartford, “when your grandmother says, ‘Hey, do you want to play a hand with me?’”

The role of fortune and luck is big in some Asian cultures. Cards and dice games get woven into memories of baby showers, birthdays, weddings and funerals. As refugees in the U.S., Truong and others said, some of the most thrilling outings as a family are day trips to glitzy casinos that cater to Asian patrons with Asian cuisine, entertainment, translated signs and native Asian-speaking workers.

The downside of gambling is what Truong’s father warned her about. The former South Vietnamese soldier — jailed for seven years in a re-education camp after his American allies left Vietnam — cautioned his daughter against playing cards “too much” and “getting into trouble with it,” Truong recalled.

Southeast Asian refugees are among the groups that are especially vulnerable to falling into gambling addiction, experts say. One groundbreaking study more than a decade ago in Connecticut examined a sample group of refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos — and reported their rate of gambling addiction was almost 30 times the national average.

Yet Southeast Asian refugees are often overlooked in the public policy debate over the expansion of legalized gambling, as states across the nation push for new sources of revenue to fill holes in government budgets.

Advocates in the Asian community and gambling experts say this feeling of invisibility helps fuel the “hidden” addiction. A tradition passed through generations, they say, can spiral out of control for some refugees who then find it difficult to get help.

“Gambling is seen as an opportunity out of poverty,” said Dr. Timothy Fong, a professor of addiction psychiatry and co-director of UCLA’s Gambling Studies Program. “When you have tremendous amounts of poverty, especially in the Southeast Asian refugee population, that tends to be a very tempting idea.”

'Seeking Comfort'

Howard Phengsomphone, 70, a Laotian elder in the Hartford area, has been trying to coax people in his community to talk about problem gambling.

“It’s not easy,” he said. Although gambling is socially accepted in his culture, and is perceived by some refugees as a way to make fast money, gambling addiction is considered taboo — part of a bigger cultural stigma in Asian communities over mental health and addiction issues.

National data show that Asians are least likely among ethnic groups in the U.S. to use mental health services.

On This Page:

Christine’s Story

The Cost of Problem Gambling in Your Community

How Gambling Impacts the Individual and Family

If You Can’t Stop Gambling, Your Life Will Be Forever Changed

How Can Gambling Lead To Poverty