COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse PracticesPathological gambling. Chinese community in Southern Italyby Gioacchino Lavanco 1 , Mauro Croce 1 , Carolina Messina 1 ,Cinzia Novara 1 , Floriana Romano 1 & Liana Arcuri 1BackgroundIt is indicative to observe that, against increasing gaming opportunities, and the more evident problematic natureof the gambling (as reported by the news and by the mass media, and the data collected by public services andby voluntary organizations), it seems strange that the social policy is inadequate, and that large scaleepidemiological research has not been carried out.Gambling is formally forbidden by the Italian law, according to the Articles 718-72 of the Penal Code 2, while Art.110 of the Social Welfare Act contains a list of illegal games. Namely, since the latter half of the 1990s, there hasbeen a progressive and relentless offer of new games, of more and more opportunities to play different forms ofgambling in different places, while the social problems linked to forms of gambling are becoming more and moreevident alongside a lack of appropriate action. There are many indicators highlighting this dramatic change. Thefirst one relates to the expenditure on different forms of gambling. From €7.73 billion in 1993 (value relative to theprices in 2006) to €54.4 billion in 2008.This fact makes it difficult to evaluate the real dimension of the phenomenon, and of the cost/benefit relationrelated to increased gambling in Italy, for example about the strangers’ gaming. This research conductedbetween October 2008 and February 2009 in Southern Italy had the objective to examine the prevalence ofgambling behaviour and pathological gambling in a group of Chinese population.MethodsThis cross-sectional study investigated the psychosocial issues that can arise as either an antecedent to thegambling or a consequence of it. The research on Chinese people examined the relationships between variousrisky behaviours such as excessive drinking, smoking and problem gambling, too. This study was cross-sectionaland investigative in design, involving the answers to a self-reporting questionnaire. Participants, recruited frommultiple social structures (n = 81) were allocated to either an experimental group (pathological gamblers) or acontrol group (social gamblers).The 16-item questionnaire was specifically constructed to measure psychosocial attitudes and beliefs across foursubscales: (a) distress arising from gaming differences, (b) worry about social changes after gaming, (c)expectations involving the discrepancy between expected and real outcomes after gaming, and (d) dependenceinvolving the desire for repetitive gambling. Each item was rated on a 4-point Likert scale across the range of1Department of Psychology, University of Palermo, Italy132