“Defined by researchers as ‘a silent epidemic’ the gambling phenomenon is a social problem that is having negative impact on individuals, families and communities. Among these effects are seen a dismantling of community networks, weakening of family and social ties, psychiatric co-morbidity, suicides and lately more homelessness. Youth, women, elderly, deprived citizens and native communities constitute the social groups that seem to suffer more from gambling accessibility when compared to others. “(Suissa, 2007)
After researching and getting more insight on this topic, I came to the solution that one of the best possible ideas would be to take two separate activities and combine them to make a stronger, more potent solution. Treatment of gambling addiction comes in many forms and most people who actually seek help for this addiction ultimately participate in some type of counseling or therapy. The ideas of taking up a sport that is challenging and provides that person with a thrill to take the place of the one that they enjoy in gambling, and joining some type of support group that helps focus on changing the negative thoughts and actions into positive ones is what I envisioned as an excellent mixed effort to help combat this issue. In technical terms, these new hobbies would be considered Cognitive Behavioral Therapies. “The goal of treatment is to "rewire" the addicted brain by thinking about gambling in a new way.” (Jazaeri & Habil, 2012) These activities would give the gambler multiple therapeutic options that have been proven to be effective at helping those who are addicted to gambling to change their thinking and behavior, and also provide great stress relieving outlets to keep them from this addiction. It would also help them to build real social skills, assist in developing relationships, and fill idle periods of time; which is when so many gamblers fall victim to the potential triggers that would usually lead them to gamble.
With all that being...