What is gambling addiction?

Gambling is a colloquial term. Psychologists speak of a compulsive or pathological gamblings. They class the gambling addiction with the disturbances of the impulse control or the abnormal habits.

In psychology, a distinction is made between pathological gambling as an independent disease and temporally limited gambling phases, which occur during manic depression and are regarded as a symptom of this disease. Men are more likely to be affected by gambling addiction than women.

What are the symptoms of gambling addcition?

If you like to participate in gambling, you are not necessarily addictive. A key indicator of gambling is that you use unusually high amounts and become more risky.

In an advanced stage, gamblers regularly spend such high amounts of money on gambling that they can not finance their expenses by their income. If you are addictive, your thoughts are often turning around the next bet. You try to equalize the previous losses by even higher or more daring bets.

Consequences of gambling addiction

As an inevitable consequence of the gameplay, debts arise. Pathologic gamblers are initially irritated by their disposition credit before they take out further loans. They also take loans with banks or with friends and relatives. The social contacts decrease as the addict devotes an ever-greater part of his free time to gambling

Extreme criminal behavior such as committing a bank robbery is rare among gamblers. However, they often order goods in the mail-order business despite the knowledge that they can not pay for them. This behavior likewise is regarded as fraud. Courts acknowledge pathological gambling as a mitigation of punishment because of the reduced accountability.