What is Problem Gambling?
The term "Problem Gambling" generally indicates all the patterns of disruptive or damaging gambling behaviour.
It is the compulsion to continue gambling despite the desire to stop and encompasses any gambling that compromises, disrupts or damages you or your family or interferes with your daily life.
Gambling-related harms
Gambling-related harms are the adverse impacts of gambling on the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, communities and society. These harms impact personal, family, working and social relationships, financial resources, and health. Negative effects can include loss of employment, debt, crime, breakdown of relationships and deterioration of physical and mental health. At its worst, gambling can contribute to the loss of life through suicide.
It is important to point out that harm can be experienced not just by gamblers themselves; it can also affect their children, partners, wider families, social networks, employers, communities and society as a whole.
https://gamblingawarenesstrust.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MGRG-Gambling-in-Ireland-report.pdf
Inside the Brain of a Problem Gambler - BBC News (youtube.com)
In this video clip, Professor David Nutt shows a gambler being given a tablet to gamble online. The gambler is then put into an MRI scanner, and his brain activity is monitored. Whether he Is winning or losing, his brains response is identical. The brain’s reward centres light up and release dopamine, whether the gambler is winning or losing - the anticipation of winning causes this apparent dissonance between what is expected and what is happening. The illusion of winning, the promise of winning, causes obsessional thinking about the event long after it has physically ceased.