The Questions Parents Should Be Asking

• A study in Addictive Behaviors of 915 sports bettors in Ontario (77% men) found depression and anxiety were both linked to more severe gambling problems. Much of that link came down to coping: for many, betting isn’t about winning money. It’s a way to deal with how they feel.
• A study in the Journal of Gambling Studies of Australian men aged 18 to 25 found that higher depression and more frequent sports betting predicted worse problem gambling later on.
• This month, Ontario researchers looked at emergency room visits for gambling disorder after online betting expanded. Among young men aged 10 to 29, visits were 154% higher than expected. More than 70% of those visits also involved another mental health condition or heavy substance use.

That doesn’t mean gambling causes depression, or that depression causes gambling. But the two can collide, and when they do, parents are left trying to work out which problem they’re looking at. Often it’s more than one.

After all, dopamine is a powerful anti-depressant, so it’s understandable that depression and gambling may be linked.

A phone call from a stranger

A North Carolina Health News story shows how well this problem hides.

A Charlotte mother found out about her 21-year-old son’s sports betting from another college student. Her son owed the student a few hundred dollars but he wasn’t getting in touch about the money. He was worried. He knew another young man who had lost more than $25,000 betting on sports and ended up in gambling rehab, and he didn’t want her son to end up the same way.

She and her husband went to see their son the next day. He admitted he had a problem. They helped him find a therapist and he’s now working on his recovery.

Someone outside the family saw the danger first. That’s not a failure by those parents. It shows how invisible gambling addiction can be. There’s no smell of alcohol and no stumbling through the door. Your son could be sitting next to you on the couch watching football while losing thousands on his phone.

Listen first, lecture later

The goal of the first conversation isn’t to catch him. It’s to get him talking.

Your anger is justified. You’ve made sacrifices and paid for college and now the money is going to FanDuel and DraftKings. But you may only get one or two real chances to get through. If he’s just come off a binge and is full of shame, plant a seed, like a therapist’s name, and step back.

Therapist Dan Field recommends ideas from motivational interviewing. Use silences. Make statements instead of firing questions. Don’t get stuck on dollar amounts. Marc sums it up like this: “So how’s that working for you?” Let him work out that it isn’t. Then ask, “How can I help?”

Don’t ask “Do you have a gambling problem?”

The answer will almost always be a flat no.

There are a number of ways that you can start asking questions surrounding gambling to open up the conversation, such as:

• What betting apps do you have?
• Do your friends bet?
• Do you bet during games?
• Are you doing parlays?
• Are you borrowing money or using credit cards to bet?
• Have you ever lied about how much you’ve lost?
• Have you stayed up late betting?
• And the big one: how do you feel when you can’t bet?

Why bailouts backfire

Bob G, in recovery for more than 16 years, remembers losing money to a bookie in New York after college. His mother came to New York and gave him $2,900. He got on his knees and promised it would never happen again. He gambled the next weekend.

His turning point came when his parents said: no more money. His reply was, “If you loved me, you’d give me more.” They held firm, and that’s when things changed.

Paying off debts treats the symptom, not the addiction. It brings a short burst of relief for everyone, then the cycle starts again. A few practical points from the panel:

• If you pay a bill, pay it directly. In 40 years, Marc has never heard of cash given for a bill actually going to the bill.
• Warn the grandparents. When parents cut off the money, grandparents are often next.
• Keep treating the mental health side. The money is a symptom. The gambling is often a symptom too.

Get support for yourself

Staying firm is hard, and you shouldn’t do it alone. Groups like Gam-Anon and Parents Standing Together connect you with families who’ve been through it. In California and many other states, free treatment is available to family members too. When parents change how they respond, the gambler often has a better chance of changing.

Dan calls this “active helping”: look up programs, even call therapists to see who would suit your son, then give him the number so he makes the call himself.

Have the conversation tonight

Not when the credit cards are maxed out. Not when the tuition is gone. And not when he tells you he doesn’t see a way out.

He may tell you nothing is wrong, and he may be right. But as Marc puts it: “I’d rather have asked the question than discover the answer too late.”

Parents can join Chat with Dan every Tuesday at 5pm to ask questions and hear from other families. Find out more at stopbettingsports.com.

If someone you love is in crisis or talking about self-harm, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) in the US.

Sources

1. David, J., Kim, H. S., Yüce, A., & Keough, M. T. (2025). Understanding the links between anxiety, depression, and sports betting: The mediating role of sports betting motivations. Addictive Behaviors, 172, 108482. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2025.108482
2. Mancini, V. O., Brett, J. D., Heirene, R. M., Fisher, K., Nevill, T. P., & Mitrou, F. (2025). Predicting problem gambling in young men: The impact of sports gambling frequency and internalizing symptoms. Journal of Gambling Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-025-10403-0
3. Forrest, R., Myran, D., et al. (2026). Emergency department visits for gambling disorders after the legalization of single-event sports betting and rapid expansion of online gambling. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(26)00294-1/fulltext
4. Crouch, M. (2026, March 18). As sports betting booms in North Carolina, so do gambling problems. North Carolina Health News / Charlotte Ledger. https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2026/03/18/as-sports-betting-booms-so-do-gambling-problems/