Treatment clinics work to help those with gambling addiction
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Commercials advertising mobile sports betting services are hard to miss on television. But staff at Catholic Charities still call gambling addiction a hidden one.
“They’ve been gambling seven or eight years and it’s finally caught up to them,” Jeff Footer, an associate director for the Integrated Care Clinic, said of the people who have gambling problems that he works with. “They’ve hidden it from their loved ones.”
Footer says technology has changed the way people gamble. No longer are they spending hours in a casino now they can place bets right at their fingertips.
"The person doesn’t even have to leave their home now,” Footer. said "They can order their food. They can do online gambling. They can do it anytime, 24/7."
A Harris Poll from 2022 found that 71% of sports gamblers place a bet once a week and 20% of them bet on sports at least once a day.
With all this happening online, Footer says spotting a gambling addiction in a loved one can be more difficult.
“The longer it goes on, the more stressful it gets," Footer said. "They become very maybe argumentative, isolate. It just all of a sudden gets out of control.”
It’s not just adults getting hooked. Footer says gambling services are creeping into younger generations.
"In a lot of the games like 'Fortnite,'” Footer said. “They're building live casinos into the kid’s games. So it becomes kind of normal.”
If you’re concerned that a loved one might be addicted, professionals say the best thing to do is track their online habits. You can see which apps and websites they spend their time on and then seek professional help if needed.
