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Comorbidity in Problem Gambling Research

It looks like the social costs related to problem gambling could have been grossly overstated in past research studies. A recent research study commissioned by the American Gaming Association looks at the role that comorbidity plays into the problem gambling equation. Opponents to gambling, whether at the land-based or online casinos, are quick to point out that problem gambling is a societal ill that costs money to fix. Those costs related to problem gambling have been used for everything from counterarguments to assigning taxes that land and online casinos must pay to rectify problem gambling.

But the AGA’s newly commissioned research asserts that those figures often don’t take into consideration comorbidity, which is the fact that a vast majority of identified pathological problem gamblers have coexisting disorders. The problem in much of the previous research associated with problem gamblers, whether they are at the land or online casinos, centers on the idea that if comorbidity is not taken into account, then researchers are attributing all of the costs related to that pathological gambler to problem gambler, when in fact some of the rehabilitation costs are a part of the other disorders present in the gambler.

Professor of economics at Charleston College, Dr. Douglas M. Walker, conducted the research and wrote the white paper for the AGA which is gaining an increasing amount of attention from the media and the online casinos industry. His paper essentially discounts many of the past research studies that have measured the social costs of gambling. Walker notes, “Given that many pathological gamblers exhibit other disorders, it is difficult if not impossible to accurately estimate the social costs attributable specifically to pathological gambling. To really understand how comorbidity effects the past research, Walker illustrates the concept with an example, “consider a pathological gambler who is also a drug addict and engages in behaviour resulting in social costs of $5 000. What proportion of the cost should be attributed to the gambling disorder and what proportion to drug use?”

This is a key point in his argument that perhaps the land and online casinos have gotten a bad rap in the past with unfair costs attributed to gambling related problems.