Gambling equals Good Health

YALE CONFIRMS WHAT GCMONEY HAS KNOWN ALL ALONG

Gambling equals Good Heath

It appears that some from the academic world now agree with what those in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and the offshore gaming industry have known for years: gambling is something that is good for the soul.

In a recent study conducted by Yale University and published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Rani Desai, associate professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine, concludes that there appears to be an association between recreational gambling and good health among elderly persons.

"This definitely confirms what we’ve known all along in regards to our own customer base,” says Robert Evans, President of GCMoney. “Win or lose, our clients always have a positive attitude, especially when a client can turn $1,500 into $450,000 in sports betting, and hundreds of others turn $50 into tens of thousands in our casino.

“We know for sure that many of our clients are extremely happy, and as the study said, healthier,” adds Evans. “Plus with our particular business model, our clients can only wager with money that they can afford to lose – if that happens to be the case.”

Evans says their clients are smart enough to set aside only a certain amount of money for gambling, and they make the most out of the experience. He adds that this experience is not so much focused on winning or losing, but rather on the entertainment value.

In the study, Desai and her co-authors go on to state that although the underlying reasons remain hypothetical, proposed explanations for this increase in mental health are attributed to the increased activity, socialization and cognitive stimulation while engaged in gambling. “Such a mechanism would be consistent with the literature on healthy aging, which indicates that more socially and cognitively active elders are, in general, healthier,” Desai adds.

The Gambling Impact and Behavior Study by Desai and her colleagues compared the health status of recreational gamblers who had gambled in the past year, with persons who had not gambled. Their health, which was self-reported, was measured according to a number of to alcohol use, abuse and dependence; substance abuse and dependence; depression; mental health treatment; subjective general health; incarceration and bankruptcy.

Evans says that this is good news for a number of groups, including Las Vegas, which is experiencing unprecedented growth, Atlantic City, which is now considering adding sports betting to their casinos, offshore-based internet gaming sites, and possibly even the US health care system. “We could see a decrease in medical expenditures to our elderly if the US government would wake up and see that gambling, when operated professionally and with the clients welfare in mind, can have a positive impact in ways even we never thought of," adds Evans.