New statistics have shown that more than nine in every ten people who have been treated for their problem gambling behaviour by Health Service Executive Ireland (HSE) in the past four years were men.
In addition, data showed that it is mostly young men who have been suffering from gambling addiction, with the average age of such individuals who have also sought professional treatment in recent years being 35 years. Only recently, some data regarding the number of people who received professional help with gambling being pointed as the main problem as revealed to the National Drug Treatment Reporting System (NDTRS), was revealed.
As Casino Guardian has already reported, Louise O’Reilly, the health spokesperson of Sinn Féin, commented on the gambling addiction reports, saying that according to the available evidence to date shows that problem gambling within society is extremely complex and more widespread than ever.
What is more, the figures provided by the NDTRS could not describe the real picture of the actual scale of problem gambling in Ireland, as reporting cases of gambling addiction to the System is not obligatory for the time being. The figures show that the number of cases of problem gamblers receiving professional help for their problem gambling was 208 in 2015, 195 in 2016 and 219 in 2017. The figures for 2018 only cover about 60% of the cases, with the HSE reporting 174 cases of people being treated for problem gambling for now. This means that there were at least about 800 cases in which patients were treated for a gambling addiction by the HSE in the past four years.
HSE Provides Data for Problem Gamblers’ Number of Region
As mentioned above, the majority of individuals who got treated for gambling addiction are men, and under 50 years of age.
According to figures provided by the HSE for the period from 2015 to 2017, more than 80% of cases in which problem gambling was treated, saw people aged between 20 and 49 get treated for their compulsive gambling habits. The average age for those entering treatment was 35 years of age. What is more, more than 90% of the people who got treated for problem gambling were men.
The HSE also indicated the areas where local community healthcare organisations had the highest rates of problem gambling. For the time being, there are nine such areas in the country.
The highest number of gambling addiction cases between 2015 and 2017 was reported in CHO 4, which cover Cork and Kerry. In 2015, one-fourth of the cases were registered in either Cork or Kerry, while in 2017 the figure was 24%. The highest gambling addiction rates in 2016 were registered in CHO 5, where Wexford, Waterford, Carlow/Kilkenny and south Tipperary are included.
CHO 5 was also the area which had the highest gambling addiction treatment rates in both 2015 and 2016. A year later, in 2017, the highest problem gambling treatment rates were registered in south Dublin, west Wicklow and Kildare.
- Author
Daniel Williams
