Gambling Among Young People, 837 kB

included nine studies of in total 7 700 North American adolescents where the prevalence of problem
and pathological gambling and was estimated at between 9.9 and 14.2 per cent. The latter group, the
pathological gamblers, comprised 4.4 – 7.4 per cent of all young people (5). The corresponding
analyses of studies of both adults and young people have subsequently been carried out, where it is
possible to compare adults with young people. In 2001, there were 32 studies on young people and 66
on adults. In these studies, the average proportion of young pathological gamblers in the last year was
4.8 per cent and the figure for adults was 1.4 per cent. An average of 14.6 per cent of the young people
in these studies and 2.5 per cent of the adults had a gambling problem (56).
The prevalence of pathological gambling and problem gambling seems to be much the same in
Australia compared to North America. Two regional studies classify between 2–4 per cent of young
people as pathological gamblers and a further 11 per cent as problem gamblers (15, 16). One study
from New Zealand indicates that the prevalence of gambling problems in adolescents aged between
13 and 18, lies somewhere in the region of 11 to 21.6 per cent (depending on the tool used; DSM-IV-J,
SOGS-RA or 8 screen Y) (57).
Corresponding figures and patterns can be seen in various European countries, in for example the
UK and Spain, the proportion of young people with a gambling problem and addiction has been estimated
at approximately 6–7 per cent using DSM-IV-J and 14–17 per cent using SOGS-RA in
different regional studies (58–61). In the Nordic region, studies on young people have been carried
out in Iceland and Norway. Two major prevalence studies on pathological gambling have recently
been conducted in Iceland and in these studies the prevalence of pathological gambling among 13 to
18-year-olds is estimated at in the region of 2–3 per cent (depending on the tool; SOGS-RA or DSM-
IV-MR-J) with a further 3–4 per cent having a gambling problem (62, 63). In the two Norwegian
studies that have been published, the prevalence of a gambling problem/addiction among 12 to 18year-olds
has been estimated at 3–5 per cent (10, 12).
in sweden
Despite the fact that young Swedes play less than Swedish adults, a greater proportion of young people
report that they have a gambling problem. In the Swedish population study, 5.1 per cent of the young
people said that they had a gambling problem/addiction, compared to 2 per cent of the adults. Among
18–24-year-olds the proportion with a gambling problem/addiction was just over 3 per cent, a higher
figure for adults over the age of 24 (17). According to the Swedish population study it would seem that
the prevalence of problem gambling and pathological gambling in young Swedes is roughly the same
as in young people in other countries, bearing in mind, however, that the studies available have all
been conducted in the West. That the prevalence in the Swedish study is higher than in the Norwegian
studies, despite the fact that young people in Norway gamble more than their Swedish counterparts,
can perhaps be explained by the fact that different tools have been used. In Sweden, SOGS-R for
adults was used, while in the Norwegian studies a tool similar to DSM-IV-MR-J was used in one, and
an expanded version of Lie/Bet was used in the other (10, 12, 17). According to studies (see section on
screens) it would seem that SOGS-RA generally estimates the proportion of those with a problem as
higher compared to DSM-IV-MR-J, which may also apply to SOGS-R (46).
In Sweden a smaller study was conducted in 2003 at an upper secondary school in Östersund
(central Sweden). Only boys participated in this study, which was a questionnaire using SOGS-R (for
adults, same as in the Swedish population study). Of the 178 boys, who were 16 or 18, 15.7 were
classified as pathological gamblers, 6.7 per cent as problem gamblers and a further 25.8 per cent as
moderate problem gamblers (64). In other words, it appeared that almost 50 per cent of these boys had
some kind of gambling problem, a figure that is much higher than other studies. An explanation for
this might be the fact that only boys participated in the study, and that gambling problems and pathological
gambling is much more common among boys than girls. However, despite this the figure is
still startlingly high. What is also surprising is the fact that pathological gambling seems to be more
common among these adolescents than problem gambling, in most other studies the opposite is true.
A smaller study commissioned by the Swedish National Institute of Public Health was carried out
at the Maria Ungdom Clinic in Stockholm in 2004. The Maria Ungdom Clinic is a clinic for young
people with an addiction. 180 adolescents, on average 17 years old, who had sought help at the Clinic,
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