Open Forum. Emmanuel Deun: "Gambling Addiction, a Little-Known Public Health Problem"

It is estimated that 500,000 people in France suffer from a gambling addiction. This is approximately the same number as the number of people diagnosed with cancer. Yet, this pathology is both underestimated and misunderstood. As a clinical psychologist in Nice, specializing in addictions in general and gambling addiction in particular, I would like to shed light on this addiction, which wreaks psychological, economic, and social havoc.

The Côte d'Azur is obviously particularly affected, due to the significant gambling offerings provided by French and Monegasque casinos. However, the real danger comes less and less from casinos, which are increasingly being asked by public authorities to be vigilant regarding the risk of addiction.

In reality, the problem seems to me to come primarily from the online gambling offer: unauthorized virtual casinos and legal sports betting sites. The latter have particularly aggressive promotional practices that are traps for the most disadvantaged populations. Because the problem is there: gambling addiction mainly affects an economically vulnerable population, young men under 30 for the most part, attracted by the hope of winning linked to betting on popular sports like football or tennis. In this regard, the year 2024 and its Olympic Games have wreaked havoc… Gambling is ultimately the entrepreneurship of the poor, that of those who will never have access to the success promised by the "start-up nation".

I also want to question the notion of responsible gaming, which I consider to be a sleight of hand on the part of gaming operators, which ultimately consists of shifting the blame for addiction onto the sick player and exonerating from any responsibility operators whose marketing techniques are based on wild cynicism, for example offering several hundred euros for opening accounts.

From a public health perspective, the consequences are catastrophic, and the patients I meet, in my office in Nice or at La Bastide de Callian, the clinic where I work, are both psychologically and financially destitute. How do you care for a young person who, in addition to having to free themselves from their addiction, begins life with tens of thousands of euros in debt? Gambling addiction has this particularity: it makes you poor! For the rest, ultimately, and despite some specificities that I explain in my book, gambling addiction is also an addiction like any other, and its causes are quite similar to those that lead to excessive alcohol, cannabis, or cocaine use.

To broaden the discussion and escape from this worrying observation, it seems important to me to turn to neuroscience, which provides valuable insight, but why not also look, more lightly, at literature and cinema? Did you know, for example, that Nice and Monaco were the location for the most iconic film ever made about gambling addiction? It's a 1962 film by Jacques Demy called La Baie des Anges, in which we discover a Jeanne Moreau under the influence of gambling, scouring the Palais de la Méditerranée casino in Nice and the Monte-Carlo casino.

Gambling addiction is a fascinating subject, a symptom of our times, of its brutality and unbridled cynicism, about which the only useful conclusion to formulate for those who suffer from it is a single piece of advice: come out of your isolation and talk about it. To those around you, to a psychologist, it doesn't matter to whom, but break the solitude, get rid of the shame and talk about it.

His latest book: "La Chance au prochain tirage" (Luck at the Next Draw) is published by Imago, Paris. Emmanuel Deun's practice is in Nice, and he works at the La Bastide clinic in Callian, in the Var region.

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