To investigate the relationship between availability of gambling activities and participation in gambling, maximum amount of money lost in 1 day to gambling, and number of pathological gamblers.
Method:
Two random samples (1002 and 1257 adults) were surveyed 7 years apart using the South Oaks Gambling Screen to identify pathological gamblers.
Results:
Seven years later, significantly more people reported having gambled, and the number of pathological gamblers had increased by 75%.
Conclusions:
These findings support the hypothesis that increases in the availability of gambling are related to increases in the number of problem gamblers.
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