October 29th marks the Day Without Gambling. Health organizes a course that offers participants the necessary knowledge to detect, address and act with young people.
One hundred people started treatment for gambling addiction during 2020 in the Balearic Islands, according to the results of a pilot program promoted by the National Plan on Drugs in order to collect a new indicator of treatment initiation for behavioral addiction. Precisely to address this problem, the Plan for Addictions and Drug Addictions of the Balearic Islands (PADIB) of the General Directorate of Public Health and Participation has organized a course – presented today by the Councilor for Health and Consumption, Patricia Gomez – aimed at professionals working in the preventive field, in which more than one hundred and fifty people have enrolled.
The pilot program, in which the UCA, Proyecto Hombre, Juguesca Association, the day hospital of Eivissa and the consultation of Formentera have participated, focused on the collection of treatment initiations only for gambling with money in different modalities and video games. The initiative has allowed to have updated data in the course of the year 2020, although it should be taken into account that this year was special due to the pandemic and that the trend marked by the results are not what they would have been in a normal year.
In terms of results, a total of 96 treatment initiations were collected: 90.62% were men and 9.37% were women. The distribution by islands was 77 in Mallorca, 6 in Menorca and 13 in Eivissa.
The age of onset of addiction varied by sex. Men were mostly between 18 and 25 years of age, while women (the proportion of women who started treatment was small) were between 46 and 55 years old.
The 53.1 % of the participants had an addiction to face-to-face gambling and the most common type of games among those who started treatment were slot machines in hotels or gambling halls (30.2 %), casino games such as roulette or blackjack (25 %) and live, streaming or delayed sports betting (12.5 %).
More than one hundred and fifty registered for the course organized by PADIB
Precisely to deal with this problem, more than one hundred and fifty professionals are being trained from today on gambling addiction prevention in a course organized by the Plan for Addictions and Drug Addictions of the Balearic Islands of the General Directorate of Public Health and Participation. The sessions begin this week, when the No Gambling Day is celebrated on October 29.
The training, entitled “Basic foundations for the prevention of gambling addiction”, is aimed at professionals working in the preventive, educational and social field to provide them with the necessary knowledge to detect, address and act with minors who may find themselves in these situations.
In this sense, Gómez stressed that this problem cannot be addressed in isolation from the health field, but requires a strong commitment from the whole of society.
The course will be given by Mariano Chóliz Montañés, professor of the Department of Basic Psychology at the University of Valencia. It consists of an inaugural day that takes place today, October 27, from 11.00 to 14.00 h, in person (training room of Jesus Street, 38) and virtual at the same time, and five more sessions of 3 hours, which will be virtual every Wednesday until December 1.
The contents of the course are as follows:
Training session 1
Gambling in Spain and the Balearic Islands. Socioeconomic data, rules and regulations
Training session 2
Gambling addiction: psychological, biological and social foundations.
Training session 3
Epidemiology of gambling addiction and description of measurement instruments.
Training session 4
Psychosocial and legal variables involved in the prevention of gambling addiction. Risk and protective factors
Training session 5
Gambling addiction prevention programs: description of the main international programs and the variables analyzed.
Training session 6
Gambling addiction prevention program, Ludens
Data on gambling use: men gamble more than women.
According to the ESTUDES 2018-2019 Illes Balears survey on drug use in secondary education, that is, among students aged 14-18 years:
-People who reported having played video games the last 12 months were 95.5% in the case of men and 69.9% in the case of women.
-As for playing electronic sports (e-sports), 64% of men and 34.6% of women did so.
As for those who reported having watched e-sports, 51.8% of men and 23% of women did so.
Data on gambling with money: the percentage of women who gamble with money rises
According to the household survey EDADES 2019-2020 Illes Balears, among people aged 15 to 64 years, men play with money more than women; the percentage of men and women who play with money in person and also the percentage of women who play with money on the Internet is up, compared to the previous survey:
-Declared having played games with money on the internet in the last 12 months 7% of men and 2.9% of women. In the 2017-2018 survey they were 7 % of men and 0.9 % of women.
-Reported playing games with dubbers face-to-face the last 12 months: 64.7 % of men and 68.3 % of women. In the 2017-2018 survey it was 55.7 % of men and 41.2 % of women.
Awareness-raising actions.
With the aim of raising awareness among young people, today, October 27, from 9.00 am to 10.00 am, framed in the program “If you have it clear, choose”, developed by PADIB and the University of the Balearic Islands, through the Healthy and Sustainable Office, a set of actions aimed at informing and raising awareness among university youth will be carried out. The “Espacio inalámbrico” (Wireless Space), a game meeting without technology, has been organized in order to raise awareness of the need to meet and have fun socializing in person.