These patterns contribute to the effect on a family financially and emotionally. All racial and socioeconomic backgrounds are involved. The purpose of this research paper is to analyze the progressive symptoms that ignite gambling addictions that lead to a male gambler's effects on his family. .
Currently, gambling within the male population has been increasing substantially in the United States. More than 80 percent of American adults have admitted to gambling at some point in their lives and an estimated 1.5 percent of these American adults had become compulsive gamblers (Compulsive Gambling). An escalated increase of gambling expenditures since 1974 have quickly taken over American gambling. Within this year, approximately 61% of the US population gambled and estimated that Americans legally wagered $17.35 billion (Lee). In 1988 they legally wagered $210 billion and in 1992 it increased to $330 billion resulting in a 19 fold increase within the 20 years (Lee). This means that a large majority of Americans gamble and contribute to the compulsive gambling population. .
In scientific terms, according to DSM IV written by the American Psychiatric Association, pathological gambling is a diagnosable mental disorder as a "persistent and recurrent maladaptive gambling behavior that disrupts personal, family, and vocational pursuits" (qtd. in Lee 545). The difference between compulsive gambling and pathological gambling is that compulsions are the behavioral component of the obsessional state in which a person finds his abnormal behavior alien and attempts to resist it (Carone et al. 111). Pathological implies a physiological basis to the problem and focuses more on the person's illness. "Pathological gambling is a progressive disease that devastates not only the gambler but everyone with whom he has a significant relationship" (Pathological Gambling: An addiction embracing the nation).
