COVID-19 Impacts Gambling Disorder Support

Funds to support gambling disorder treatment and counseling have declined significantly since COVID-19. Kandace Blanchard, the founder of the New Mexico Council on Problem Gaming, has experienced this loss in revenue firsthand, particularly since March. The council provides a hotline and usually counseling services, but counseling has stopped almost completely now.

The council is funded partially by the lottery, which has now become its only source of income. But even that has decreased so significantly, the council is looking at about a $700,000 shortfall for the year along with about a 15% increase in calls to the hotline. The council also hasn't been able to pay its 35 sub-contracted therapists.

Employees and volunteers in the organization also train all of the employees at gaming establishments on how to understand problem gambling.

"We don't have any income because our income is tied to the net take of the gaming industry," Blanchard says. "We're doing some online therapy."

According to the New Mexico Gaming Control Board's reports, payments to gambling help programs from racetracks shrunk to $45 for the month of June and nonprofit operators paid nothing to charities. In contrast, in February racetracks paid $57,319 to organizations that help with problem gaming and $155,976 went to charitable and educational donations.

The last major study on the topic in New Mexico, released in 2006, found that roughly 29,000 men and women had gambling problems and tens of thousands more could develop one. The Responsible Gaming Association of New Mexico has funded a new compulsive gambling study, which was set to be released spring 2020.

The problem extends nationally.

Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, tells SFR his organization predicts roughly between a 25% and 40% cut in public funding for compulsive gambling expenditures nationwide. In 2016, the national spend was $72 million but Whyte fears that in 2020 or 2021 that spend could be down to as low as $40 million.

"Problem gamblers are incredibly discriminated against, even in state health agencies and so by that I mean people with gambling problems have less access to publicly funded services than they do for even other addictions or disorders," Whyte says. "The problem gambling safety net is already tattered and the potential cuts may literally eliminate it for a lot of people in a lot of places."