Priklausomybė nuo azartinių lošimų

Abstract

When in 2001 a new pastime, gambling games, was legalized in Lithuania, negative outcomes of gambling games were noticed as follows: increase in the number of people pathologically addicted to gambling games. In 2005 as few as 71 persons appealed to the State Gaming Control Commission, and in 2006 this number increased by 102 people. Craving for gambling games is described as a pathological addiction to gamble, distinguished by particularly huge uncontrollable intensity of gambling, which results in many psychological, spiritual, financial, social and other kind of problems occurring for a gambler, as well as it causes alterations in a person’s relationships with the family, friends, working mates and others. This master paper analyses social problems related to a person’s craving for gambling games in Lithuania. A qualitative non-standardized interview, which was chosen as the instrument of empirical research in this work, partly proved that plenty various social problems are related to addiction to gambling games in Lithuania: the problems occurring due to the legal reglamentation of gambling games, social problems related to the preventive programmes against addiction to gambling games in Lithuania; problems concerning positive support for the people addicted to gambling games. The research of this paper served to reveal deeper social problems associated with a person’s addiction to gambling games, its conclusions and suggestions could be used for solutions how to reduce the number of pathological gamblers when implementing preventive programmes, improving the legal reglamentation of gambling games, and organizing support for people addicted to gambling games.