Confinements and addictions: online gambling with deleterious effects
The period of health crisis and confinements have accentuated the phenomenon of online gambling addictions.
AFP / Archives
Text by: Dominique Desaunay Follow
4 min
In France, nearly two million players have addictive behavior to online gambling, according to the National Gaming Authority.
The period of health crisis and confinements have only accentuated this phenomenon with deleterious effects on our physical and mental health, alert many addictologist psychiatrists.
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The health crisis and its successive confinements have influenced the practices of online players, assesses
a report commissioned by the National Gaming Authority
from the research organization Harris Interactive.
If people familiar with gambling have changed their behavior very little during this pandemic period, the study points to the arrival of new players in mass.
In particular young men who engage in sports betting, horse racing, engage in poker games and regularly frequent the web platforms of online casinos.
An addiction to online gambling which is explained first and foremost by having more free time, say the people questioned who refute the very idea of any addiction.
Fighting against boredom or even the need to change your mind in this context of serious epidemic crisis are among the strong arguments expressed by many Internet users.
"
Because deep down we are not well ...
"
But the limit between a recreational practice and a real addiction is extremely held, specifies Dr. Christophe Cutarella, specialist in addictology and member of the scientific college of the Foundation of private hospitals,
Ramsay Santé
.
“
When you spend a lot of time behind a screen, whether to work or to play, it will inevitably be harmful in the long run.
This health crisis has accentuated addictions because deep down we are not well, he
explains.
We can't really go out so we're going to do everything virtually with our handy phone or our computer.
"
“
Moreover, and to make matters worse,
continues the specialist,
many online pubs constantly invite us to play gambling.
The period we are going through will have both physical and mental repercussions, such as weight gain or an uncontrollable desire to play more and more.
And then there will be longer-term consequences, acquisition defects in children or the fact of giving up going out to play sports and get back in shape ... But from the point of view of the psychiatrist and the addictologist, I see that the consequences of the health crisis on our mental health are already there.
"
Apart from addiction problems, several studies published in March 2021 show the harmful effects of confinement on the mental health of citizens.
The Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics Department, which carried out
a study
during the spring 2020 confinement, delivers a clear finding: one in seven people presented with a severe depressive syndrome at the end of this first confinement.
Women and young people have been the most affected by this general depression.
A trend that is likely to increase with the closure of schools and the restrictions extended to all of metropolitan France announced Wednesday March 31 by Emmanuel Macron.
The president is now counting on a massive arrival of vaccines in April to put an end to this health crisis which has affected us all for more than a year.
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