Problem gambling and subjective well-being: results of a study with a representative sample in Santiago (Chile)

This study aimed to examine the relationship between problem gambling and subjective well-being in the general population. Previous research on the subject has shown that problem gambling has varied harmful consequences, while controlled gambling could lead to recreation, sharing with others, and achieving higher levels of well-being. A representative, probabilistic, and multistage sample of 1032 cases was used for the study (54.65% women; mean age of 44.06 years, SD = 16.84). The instruments used were the Spanish validation of the National Opinion Research Center DSM Screen for Gambling Problems (NODS) and the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI). It is estimated that 74.98% of the population have gambled the past year and 14.28% were people who experience gambling problems at some point in their lives. Recent estimates indicate prevalence rates of gambling disorder among current adult gamblers ranging between 0.12 and 5.8% worldwide, but these figures are higher when problem gambling is also taken into consideration. Moreover, people who experience gambling problems report lower levels of life satisfaction than people who do not experience gambling problems. Participants that did not gamble during the last year and the group that did gamble, but did not qualify as problematic gambler, showed the same levels of Satisfaction With Life (SWL). At the same time, based on a multigroup analysis carried out through modeling with structural equations (SEM), it was observed that gambling had a strong direct and negative effect on SWL of the group of people who experience gambling problems (λ = -0.382; p < 0.01), while for the group of people who do not experience gambling problems, it presents a weak direct and positive effect (λ = 0.019; p < 0.001), explaining 14.6% and 0.0% of the variance of SWL (significance due only to sample size, since the strength of the association is null), respectively. Results are discussed considering the effects of gambling on life satisfaction.