Stephen McDaniel, a public health professor, said he once had a student who didn’t show up to class for half a semester. It wasn’t the flu or a cold. It wasn’t mono either — or anything the student could have gotten a sick note for.
“Come to find out, he had been holed up in his room doing Internet gambling,” McDaniel said.
This university, like most in the nation, does not treat gambling addictions like a medical condition, but a study released last week by the Task Force on College Gambling Policies says they should.
The report said only 22 percent of colleges have written student-gambling policies and compelled universities to enact them even as online poker and sports betting have made gambling more accessible to students. The report also said universities should make accommodations for students recovering from a gambling problem and promote campus-wide awareness of pathological gambling as a mental health disorder.
McDaniel said creating a treatment program for students with an addiction to gambling is a necessary but difficult step because of budget cuts and how recently pathological gambling has been introduced to the public conscious.
“One of the problems with this area is that … not just on campuses, but in general, all mental health practitioners really aren’t trained to deal with this,” he said. “Problem gambling has really just sort of come on the public-health radar.”
Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Warren Kelley classified pathological gambling as simply another addiction, adding that medical professionals on the campus are prepared to handle students who come forward with gambling problems.
“I would say that we think about addictive behaviors by students generally, and we think of how we treat them in a similar way,” he said. “Our staff organizations in mental health in the [University Health Center] and in the [University Counseling Center] are very prepared to deal with addictive behaviors, you know, gambling being one of those.”
But McDaniel thinks pathological gambling is a whole different animal.
“Unlike other addictions, I mean, you can really get yourself in trouble very quickly, and when you hit bottom, typically you’re broke, oftentimes resulting in stealing, embezzling, and it’s just — before you know it, it’s taken control of your life,” he said, adding that the symptoms of alcohol and drug addictions are more easily identified by mental health professionals.
McDaniel, who started the Maryland Initiative for Responsible Gambling, said the health center contacted him a few times this year about starting a gambling campaign, but a program seems to be in its beginning stages at most and is not currently active.
Representatives from the health center could not be reached for comment.
While Kelley said he hasn’t seen gambling as a severe, widespread issue at the university, McDaniel said college students today have unprecedented and potentially dangerous exposure to gambling.
“If you think of your parents, gambling was stigmatized. It was thought to be tied to organized crime, not to mention sort of our Judeo-Christian ethic, you know, that gambling was sinful,” he said. “Nowadays, NBC has late-night poker. Poker is the third most covered event on ESPN … so it seems like, ‘Hey, this is really cool.’ And it can be for most people. But college students are three times more likely than the general public to have a problem.”
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