Betting harm is a medical issue, not only a money one
Online sports betting health risks are the physical and psychological consequences of wagering: broken sleep, anxiety, low mood, stress-driven illness, and at the far end, a trip to the emergency department. That is the tidy definition. The messy part is that almost nobody notices the health side until the money side has already gone wrong, and by then the symptoms get blamed on work, exams, or “just a rough patch”.
New research out of Ontario, Canada puts numbers on the far end of that spectrum. If you bet on cricket, football or anything else on your phone, or you are watching someone close to you do it, the findings are worth your attention, even though the data comes from another country.
What the problem gambling study actually found
Public health researchers at the University of Toronto examined emergency room visits for gambling disorder from January 2012 to June 2025, spanning Ontario’s April 2022 launch of a regulated private online gambling market. They compared observed ER visits against the number that would have been expected had online gambling not been legalised. By April to June 2025, visits were 99% above expected levels. The study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
The rise was not a one-off spike. It climbed roughly 7% per quarter and kept climbing to the end of the study window, concentrated among males aged 10 to 44. These were also not mild cases: nearly one in three of those ER visits ended in hospitalisation, and more than 70% involved another mental health condition or heavy substance use alongside gambling disorder.
| Measure | Finding |
|---|---|
| Study period | January 2012 to June 2025 (Ontario opened its regulated online market in April 2022) |
| Trend in gambling-disorder ER visits | About 7% increase per quarter |
| All gambling-disorder ER visits, Apr–Jun 2025 | 99% above expected levels |
| Males aged 10–29 | 154% above expected |
| Males aged 30–44 | 116% above expected |
| Severity | Nearly one third of visits led to hospitalisation |
| Co-occurring conditions | More than 70% involved another mental health condition or heavy substance use |
A companion study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal tracked a second signal: contacts to ConnexOntario, the province’s 24-hour mental health and addictions helpline. Gambling-related contacts doubled after April 2022, with the sharpest jump, 317%, among males aged 15 to 24.
Study co-author Ryan Forrest, a public health doctoral student at the University of Toronto, told Time that the rise in severe presentations “might be a bit of a warning signal of a wider increase in harms across the general population”. He also made the point that matters most for you: ER data only captures the most extreme cases. It says nothing about the debt, the arguments at home, or the worsening mood of everyone who never ends up in a hospital.
Two caveats, because this is gambling harm research and not prophecy. The data is Canadian, so the figures do not transfer directly to India. And an association between legalisation and ER visits is not proof that one app caused one admission. What does transfer is the mechanism the researchers describe: constant smartphone access, fast betting cycles, relentless promotion aimed at young men, and the ability to bet alone and unseen. Those conditions exist on every phone in India too.
Myth: “if I can afford it, it isn’t hurting me”
Affordability is a financial test, not a health one. You can stay within your budget and still lose two hours of sleep a night, snap at your family, and carry a knot in your stomach through every match. The body keeps score of the stress even when the bank balance looks survivable.
These are the responsible gambling signs worth checking honestly, because they tend to show up before the money does:
- Sleep that follows the odds. Staying up for a late market, lying awake replaying a bet, waking at 4am to check a score.
- Physical stress symptoms. Tension headaches, racing heart, tight chest, appetite swings, stomach trouble, jaw clenching.
- Mood tied to results. Irritability or flatness after losses, restlessness when you cannot bet, a buzz that only a live bet seems to produce.
- Anxiety and low mood that outlast the session. Dread about checking your account or your phone notifications.
- Concentration and memory slipping. Missed deadlines, zoning out at work or in class, phone open on a betting app during meetings or meals.
- Secrecy. Deleting app notifications, lying about time or amounts, betting in the bathroom or after everyone is asleep.
- Chasing. Raising stakes to recover a loss, or treating the next match as the fix for the last one.
- Substance use creeping up. More drinking or smoking around betting sessions, or using something to sleep afterwards.
One or two of these on a bad weekend is not a diagnosis. A pattern that has lasted weeks and is getting worse is a reason to act now rather than wait for a crisis.
Myth: “the dangerous stage is obvious when you reach it”
It usually is not, because the escalation happens in small, reasonable-sounding steps. Nobody decides to develop a gambling disorder. They decide to deposit a little more because the odds looked good, then to borrow from a friend “just until salary”, then to hide the borrowing, then to bet bigger to clear the borrowing. Each step makes sense in isolation. The stack of them does not.
The clinical picture that the Ontario researchers saw in hospitals is what happens when that stack collapses: gambling disorder arriving alongside depression, anxiety, alcohol or drug use, acute financial crisis, or an episode of self-harm. More than 70% of those ER visits carried a second condition, which tells you these problems rarely travel alone.
Treat the following as a health emergency rather than a money problem, and get professional help the same week, not eventually:
- Thoughts of suicide or self-harm, or feeling that your family would be better off without you. Seek help immediately, not after one more attempt to win it back.
- Borrowing from loan apps or informal lenders, selling possessions, or touching money that is not yours to cover losses.
- Panic attacks, chest pain, or an inability to eat or sleep for several days.
- Drinking or using drugs to cope with losses, or to keep betting.
- Lying to a partner or parent about money you cannot repay, or a relationship breaking down over betting.
- Repeatedly deciding to stop and finding yourself depositing again within days.
If you are reading this about someone else, you do not need their permission to get advice. Family members can call a helpline or speak to a mental health professional for guidance on how to raise it without a confrontation that ends the conversation.
Myth: “there’s no real help for this in India”
There is, and most of it is free. Gambling disorder is a recognised behavioural health condition, which means the people who treat anxiety, depression and addiction can treat this too.
- Call a mental health helpline. Tele-MANAS, the central government’s 24×7 mental health support service, can be reached on 14416. KIRAN, the national mental health rehabilitation helpline, operates on 1800-599-0019. Both are free, confidential, and available in multiple languages. Ask directly for support with gambling and money-related distress.
- See a doctor or psychiatrist. A general physician can rule out stress-related physical problems and refer you onward. Psychiatry departments at government medical colleges and addiction medicine services, including the de-addiction and technology-use clinics run by institutions such as NIMHANS in Bengaluru, assess and treat behavioural addictions.
- Get talking therapy. Cognitive behavioural therapy has the strongest evidence base for gambling disorder. A clinical psychologist or licensed counsellor, in person or online, is the right professional to ask for.
- Join a peer group. Gamblers Anonymous runs meetings in several Indian cities and online, with no fees. Hearing the same story from someone two years further along does something a helpline cannot.
- Cut off access while you sort out the rest. Use the self-exclusion tool on every account you hold, set hard deposit and loss limits, delete the apps, turn off promotional emails and SMS, and install blocking software on your phone and laptop. Our guide to responsible gambling tools explains what each control does, the self-exclusion guide walks through shutting accounts down, and the article on deposit and loss limits covers how to set them so they actually hold.
- Hand over the money controls. Ask a trusted family member to manage cards and UPI access for a period. It feels extreme. It also removes the thirty-second window in which most relapses happen.
One more thing the researchers flagged, and it is not aimed at players: they argued for stronger guardrails at the industry level, including advertising limits, mandatory spending caps, and proper links between gambling platforms and mental health services. Until that exists everywhere, the caps you set yourself are the ones doing the work.
Gambling always carries a built-in house edge, which means losses over time are the mathematical norm rather than bad luck. Treat it as paid entertainment, never as income or a way out of a financial hole, and keep it to money and time you have decided in advance you can lose. If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, contact Tele-MANAS on 14416 or your nearest emergency department now. This article is health information, not medical advice. Betting is for adults only.