Close Friends, Family and Gambling Risk
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The day is done. We're just getting started. The last show with David Cooper. I've always thought of gambling addiction as a personal vice, something you do as a lone wolf with a bad habit. But what if it spreads to the people close to you, your closest relationships? Sort of like gambling is a bit contagious. Well, that's what researchers found, and I'm joined by one of them. His name is Dr. Richard Velleman, and he's a professor of mental health research at the University of Bath in the UK. Richard, welcome to the program. Hi, nice to be here. So this idea that gambling is kind of contagious to people close to you in your social circles, is this a new thing? Is this something that we didn't think happened before?
Well, it's very interesting. I mean, obviously I would say that, but it's very interesting because many other addictions have been seen as being things which are, I wouldn't use the word contagious.
What does research say about the social spread of gambling addiction?
I think that's an interesting word to use.
That's the media oversimplification of the study. I get it.
Exactly. But yeah, I mean, people have known that alcohol problems run in families, that drug problems run in families, smoking runs in families. The biggest single... indicator to say you're going to be a smoker is whether your parents smoke rather than whether your friends smoke. Even if your parents don't smoke and you get in with a group of friends in your teenage years and you start smoking, when you're in mid-20s or 30s, highly likely you will have stopped smoking. But if your parents were smokers, you're highly likely to carry on smoking. So smoking for some people is a phase, and for other people, it becomes a lifelong habit or even an addiction. Alcohol has lots of similarities with that.
Lots of other of the addictions do. We've indeed seen gambling as being different from that for lots of reasons. And lots of people have said, well, gambling is not really a true addiction as it doesn't involve taking in a substance like alcohol or drugs or tobacco. What this research has shown is that gambling actually is much more like other addictions. Yes, it's an individual who does the activity, but actually there are huge impacts on other people in their social circle, particularly on the family, but also on friends. But also, if you hang around with someone, if you're not a gambler, you hang around with someone who is a gambler, you're more likely to take up gambling. And if someone in your family, an important person in your family, one of your parents, your sibling is a gambler, you're more likely to take up gambling.
So that's the first big finding that actually, yes, to use your term, it's much more contagious than we'd thought. And it's much more like other addictions.
So walk me through how it can cluster in these close relationships. Like what would that actually look like? Would it be a parent subtly nudging a child to join them at the casino? Would it be shared habits? How does it sort of spread?
How does it show itself? Yeah, I mean, obviously some of those things can happen. You know, again, looking at the analogy with smoking and drinking, you know, hey, you're now 16. I can take you down to the pub in English context. I mean, drinking ages are different in different countries. Or, you know, you can now have a cigarette with me because you're now a real man or you've grown up, you're now a real woman type. So it can be overt like that, but it's much more likely to be covert. It's much more likely to be children observing their parents often over a long period of time. And even if when children are children, they say things and lots of them do, I'm never going to be a smoker when I grow up.
I'm never going to be a drinker when I grow up. I've seen the harm it does and so on. That's what they're thinking when they're at a certain age. But amazingly, when they get to a different age, what they find is that all of us lead stressful lives in one way or another. And they follow the coping mechanisms that they've seen their parents use. And they see that, you know, if you come in at the end of the day, it's been a hard day at work and you have a drink or you slide out the cigarette or you do a bit of gambling as a way of relieving stress and tension.
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