One of Kenya’s leading psychiatrists, Prof David Ndetei of the University of Nairobi, says at least one in every 10 high school and college students is now suffering from gambling disorder.
This addiction is similar to dependence on hard drugs, Prof Ndetei and his colleagues say.
They published Kenya’s first survey on the prevalence of gambling among students on Monday.
They assessed 536 students, whom they picked from among 9,742 high school, college and university students because they met the criteria of being at risk for schizophrenia.
“A total of 536 students participated in the study, of which 11.4 per cent had gambling disorder,” said the researchers, led by Prof Ndetei, who also runs the Africa Mental Health Research and Training Foundation (AMHF).
The students said they gambled to earn money to sustain themselves, but the researchers said this was not true because children from well-off backgrounds were also gambling compulsively.
“This would suggest a directional cause from addictive gambling to money concerns to sustain the addiction,” they said.
Prof Ndetei and his colleagues noted that although gambling problems may seem trivial on the surface, they are not.
Many of the gambling students were also suicidal.
“We found a significant association between the severity of gambling and suicidality,” the researchers said.
The researchers said gambling should be re-classified as an addiction disorder amongst other drug addiction disorders.
Many of the students also reported abusing substances such as tobacco, alcohol, miraa, bhangi, and opioids.
Prof Ndetei’s team blamed advertising of betting through radio, television and social media.
“There is a need for public awareness, control of advertisement and access to gambling apps for the Kenyan youths,” they said in a paper published on Monday in the BMC Psychiatry journal.
“Gambling is primarily a learned behaviour through advertisement with ‘promises’ of huge gains in money, reinforced from time to time by occasional money gains.”
The other researchers are AMHF’s Victoria Mutiso, Reinpeter Momanyi, Pascalyne Nyamai, and Christine Musyimi, and Daniel Mamah from the Washington University Medical School.
Their study is titled “The co-morbidity of DSM-V Gambling with DSM-V mental disorders and substance abuse in a Kenyan context of high-risk schizophrenia.”
DSM-V refers to the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fifth edition.
This manual is considered the gold standard in the field of mental health globally.
It classifies pathological gambling as an addictive disorder because it has addictive characteristics and shares similarities with other types of addictive behaviour, such as substance abuse.
The Kenyan students met most of the criteria needed to classify them as suffering from a gambling disorder.
Most of the respondents gambled even after a loss to win back the money that was lost – a distorted thinking that is called "chasing one's losses." Many of the respondents indicated needing to gamble with more money to achieve the desired excitement.
In addition, some respondents borrowed money as a result of their gambling habit.
Prof Ndetei and his colleagues also noted overwhelming evidence that gamblers were also struggling with other mental disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition that's triggered by a terrifying event.
More gamblers than non-gamblers were also diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder, psychosis (loss of contact with reality), and agoraphobia (fear of places and situations that might cause panic, helplessness or embarrassment) among others.
“Our findings provide an evidence base for the need for enhanced public awareness on the prevalence of gambling and its association with mental disorders, substance use and high levels of suicidality in Kenya learning institutions,” Prof Ndetei said.
Some people can stop gambling on their own. But many people need help, such as counselling to address their gambling problems.
Some medications may help treat co-occurring conditions like depression or anxiety.
