Prevalence of Adolescent Problem Gambling, Related Harms and Help-Seeking Behaviours Among an Australian Population

Abstract

Epidemiological studies have consistently reported prevalence rates ranging between 0.9 and 23.5% for problem gambling among young people. With such a large range reported in the literature, it is clear that more research in this area would be of value. The current study investigated the prevalence rate of adolescent gambling and problem gambling and explored types of harm-related and help-seeking behaviours associated with gambling specific to this population in an Australian setting. A self-administered battery of questionnaires was distributed to 252 students aged 12-18 years, attending four private schools in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney, Australia. The battery included a self-administered socio-gambling demographic questionnaire, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Fourth Edition Multiple Response Juvenile (DSM-IV-MR-J) diagnostic instrument to assess problem gambling status, the Gambling Attitudes Scale, and questionnaires using a Likert scale to measure gambling-related harms and help-seeking behaviours. The prevalence rate among this group was found to be 6.7%. The study found further support for previous findings suggesting that a significant proportion of young people meet criteria for problem gambling, that males are at-risk and that few adolescents are able to recognise when gambling is problematic or access mental health professionals for assistance.

Consumos de riesgo: menores y juegos de azar online. El problema del “juego responsable”.

“…La mayoría de los estudios sobre los hábitos de juego de los adolescentes se han realizado en Estados Unidos, Canadá, Reino Unido y Australia (Griffi ths, 2001;Wiebe y Falkowsky-Ham, 2003;Griffi ths et al, 2009;Ipsos MORI, 2009;Splevins et al, 2010;Brunelle et al, 2012;McBride y Derevensky, 2012;Parker et al, 2013), si bien en los últimos años se han llevado a cabo estudios también en diversos países de Europa, como los de Raisamo et al, (2012) en Finlandia; Tsitsika et al, (2011) y Floros et al, (2012 en Grecia, Olason et al, (2011) en Islandia, Erbas y Buchner (2012) en Alemania y Cosenza y Nigro (2015) en Italia. En España, se han realizado algunos estudios sobre la incidencia del juego entre la población en general (Gómez-Yañez, 2015;Jiménez-Murcia et al, 2014) pero pocos sobre el juego entre adolescentes.…”

“…Datos de varios países indican que el juego patológico se inicia a edades tan tempranas como 10 u 11 años (Becoña, 2004;Brunelle et al, 2012;Splevins et al, 2010;Weinberger et al, 2015;Olason et al, 2011). La infl uencia de los padres es muy importante: si los padres juegan con sus amigos o con sus hijos o compran lotería a los hijos o tarjetas de rascar, los hijos desde pequeños ya desarrollan conceptos de juegos de azar observando a sus padres (Lesieur, 2003;Floros et al, 2012).…”

“…Sin embargo, desde hace un tiempo se ha observado un incremento notable del número de jóvenes que sufren o están al borde de la ludopatía (Kuss y Griffi ths, 2012;Muñoz-Molina, 2008;Petit et al, 2015;Scholes-Balog et al, 2014;Splevins et al, 2010). En torno a otros "consumos de riesgo", como el de tabaco y alcohol, se han generado amplios consensos sobre la necesidad de alertar de los daños asociados y prohibir el acceso a los menores de edad, promoviendo así un "consumo responsable".…”

A Preliminary, Qualitative Exploration of the Influences Associated with Drop-Out from Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy for Problem Gambling: An Australian Perspective

“…Research findings suggest that only about 10% of problem gamblers seek help (Ladouceur, et al, 2001) and suggest that shame and humiliation (Pulford et al, 2009) and an inability to recognise when gambling becomes problematic (Splevins, Mireskandari, Claytin, & Blaszczynski, 2010) are contributing factors. All but one participant across the current study indicated that they had been gambling for a number of years and that their gambling habits had gradually, almost insidiously, developed to become problematic.…”

Identifying the Relationship Between Mental Health Symptoms, Problem Behaviors and Gambling Among Adolescents

“…Recent data suggests that adolescents are gambling to an increasing extent [1,2], where 36-79% of adolescents report having gambled over the past year [3][4][5]. Although adults tend to gamble more frequently than adolescents, the prevalence of problem gambling (PG) has been estimated to be two to four times higher in youth aged 12 to 17, with rates of Problem Gambling (PG) ranging from 3% to 8% [4,[6][7][8]. Furthermore, an additional 10% to 14% of adolescents who gamble could be considered 'at risk' for PG later in life [9].…”