Online epidemic: Over 90% of people with gambling addiction choose online casinos

For help in getting rid of gambling addiction, people aged 20-30 years are increasingly turning. More than 90% of people prefer the online format. This was told to journalists on October 8 by a psychologist of the psychological department of the Republican Scientific and Practical Center for Mental Health Alexander Sosenkov, the correspondent of the Minsk-Novosti agency reports.

Ludomania is a mental disorder and behavioral addiction, which is expressed in an irresistible craving for gambling or computer games for money. The specialist stressed that mental disorders should be treated as a disease. Basically, all diseases of this kind are overcome, the main thing is to correctly identify them and begin therapy.

“More than 90% of patients with gambling addiction are involved in online formats, and the disorder itself is getting younger: if earlier the average age of patients was 40-50 years, now people of 20-30 years and even teenagers are increasingly seeking help,” Sosenkov said. Such a sharp age shift is explained by the availability of games 24/7, instant feedback, impersonality of money, bets from 10 rubles and aggressive advertising. From the first bet to clinically significant problems can take less than a year, whereas in conventional casinos this path stretched.

According to the expert, sports betting forms an “illusion of skill”: it seems to a person that he does not play, but analyzes the situation and controls it.

- Research has directly linked this illusion to severe forms of addiction. In this regard, the most dangerous live betting, where the game cycle is compressed to a few minutes. An additional trap is the “almost won” effect: for example, when two characters out of three coincide on the screen, the brain activates the same pleasure zones as with a real win, forcing you to continue playing, Sosenkov explained. Ludomania is not cured by willpower and does not go away on its own: patients have impaired cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control, so a person understands that he is playing to harm, but the brain does not give a stop signal.

The biggest mistake of relatives and friends is to close the player’s debts: eliminating the consequences, a person loses motivation to change.

- Addiction lives as long as its consequences are borne by someone else, the speaker stressed. Talk about behavior, not personality, set boundaries (for example, ready to help you get treatment, but not ready to help you play). Do not expect that a person himself will ask for help: ludomania is characterized by the denial of the disease. By the way, with timely treatment the prognosis of treatment is favorable.

The fear of registering with a psychiatrist should not stop patients - with anxiety, depressive and neurotic disorders, dispensary registration is not put. Such diagnoses do not entail social restrictions.

Assistance can be obtained in the 20th psychiatric department of the RSPC mental health, anonymously or on a general basis. The waiting period for hospitalization is 25-30 days.