The Relationships between Mental Health Symptoms and Gambling Behavior in the Transition from Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood

Abstract

There is a paucity of longitudinal investigations of gambling behavior in the transition from adolescence to emerging adulthood. We conducted a longitudinal investigation of the associations and patterns of change between mental health symptoms and gambling behavior. A representative sample of Norwegians completed questionnaires containing demographic, mental health, and gambling measures at age 17 (N = 2055), and at ages 18 (N = 1334) and 19 (N = 1277). Using latent class analysis, three classes of gambling behavior were identified: consistent non-gambling (71.1%), consistent non-risk gambling (23.8%), and risky-and-problem gambling (5.1%). Being male, showing higher physical and verbal aggression and having more symptoms of depression were associated with greater odds of belonging to the risky-and-problem gambling class at age 17. Overall, the risky-and-problem gambling class had the highest physical and verbal aggression, anxiety, and depression at 19 years. Our findings elucidate the reciprocal relationship between mental health and gambling behavior in the transition from adolescence to emerging adulthood, and the importance of recognizing these factors in designing targeted interventions.

Identifying the Relationship Between Mental Health Symptoms, Problem Behaviors and Gambling Among Adolescents

“…These findings confirm the association between gambling behaviors with a range of externalizing and internalizing symptoms [25,27,28,29,33,38]. The results emphasize the importance of aggressive and depressive problems in enhancing the risk for both PG and frequent gambling within both males and females.…”

“…To account for this it has been suggested that gambling could serve as a maladaptive coping mechanism where adolescents engage in gambling to dissociate or escape from stressful life events [10,35]. If these maladaptive coping strategies are not acknowledged in the early stages of adolescence, continued gambling behavior could lead to the development of severe medical or psychiatric problems later in life [33,[36][37][38].…”

The prospective effect of purpose in life on gambling disorder and psychological flourishing among university students

“…individuals to other age groups (Sagoe et al, 2017). Previous research found that PIL can promote emerging adults to adopt adaptive coping strategies when facing stressful life events (Webster, Weststrate, Ferrari, Munroe, & Pierce, 2018;Woo & Brown, 2013).…”

Longitudinal Model Building Using Latent Transition Analysis: An Example Using School Bullying Data

“…Both LCA and LTA have been applied to problems in the social and behavioral sciences, education, and public health. Some exemplary papers can be found in social and behavioral sciences (Bergman and Magnusson, 1997 ; Todd and Houston, 2013 ; Jagenow et al, 2015 ; Sagoe et al, 2017 ), medicine and public health (Guo et al, 2009 ; Cochran et al, 2015 ; Cosden et al, 2015 ; Kenzik et al, 2015 ), and education (Goldweber et al, 2011 ; Schweizer et al, 2014 ; Williford et al, 2014 ; Ryoo et al, 2015 ; Liu et al, 2016 ). LCA and LTA have been often called, “person-centered analyses” because LCA and LTA use response patterns of observed variables to assign individuals to unobserved latent groups (Bye and Schechter, 1986 ; Collins and Wugalter, 1992 ; Bergman and Magnusson, 1997 ; Masyn, 2013 ).…”