Sports Betting Is More Popular Than Ever. So Are Gambling Disorder Diagnoses and Mental Health Issues Among Women.

4 min readNew research suggests women with a gambling disorder are significantly more likely than men to have other mental health conditions.Gambling disorder diagnoses are on the rise. The findings underscore the need to understand why someone is gambling.Gambling has been around forever, but it's become more inclusive and mainstream over the past few years with the rise in apps like DraftKings and FanDuel. Betting app Kalshi is even allowing people to gamble on things like Love Island results, which has already earned some social media backlash.Unfortunately, all that betting is linked with a rise in gambling disorder diagnoses, according to a new analysis from Epic Research. Not only that, researchers discovered that women with gambling disorder had a "heavier burden" of other mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, and PTSD.Gambling disorder is a pattern of repeated and ongoing betting and wagering that continues despite creating multiple problems in several areas of a person's life, according to the American Psychiatric Association (APA).What's fueling this and why might women in particular be at risk? Experts break it down.Meet the experts: Sanam Hafeez, PsyD, neuropsychologist and director of Comprehend the Mind in Forest Hills, New York; Kersten Bartelt, RN, study co-author, researcher, and informaticist at EpicWhat did the study find?For the study, researchers analyzed data from 13,533 Americans who were newly diagnosed with a gambling disorder between January 2017 and May 2026. These were matched with 54,132 people who had an outpatient visit on the same date but no gambling diagnosis.The researchers discovered that women who were diagnosed with a gambling disorder had a "substantially higher" diagnosis rate of nearly every mental health condition the researcher studied compared with those who didn't have a gambling disorder diagnosis. Specifically, more than 18 months before a gambling disorder diagnosis, 61.9 percent of women had depression (compared to 30.8 percent in women without a gambling disorder), 60 percent had anxiety (vs. 35.7 percent), and 24 percent had PTSD (vs. 10.3 percent).Men who were diagnosed with gambling disorder were also more likely to have these mental health conditions compared to those without gambling disorder, although the rates and differences between those with and without the disorder were lower."Gambling disorder diagnoses have been rising in the U.S., particularly in states that have legalized sports betting, and gambling disorder is known to co-occur with other mental health conditions," says Kersten Bartelt, RN, study co-author, researcher, and informaticist at Epic. "We wanted to use a large national dataset to describe how often other mental health conditions are diagnosed in patients with a gambling disorder."Why might gambling disorder co-exist with other mental health conditions?It's not shocking that gambling disorder would co-exist with other mental health conditions, according to Sanam Hafeez, PsyD, neuropsychologist and director of Comprehend the Mind in Forest Hills, New York."Many of the same emotional and behavioral struggles can contribute to both," she says. "For example, someone with depression or anxiety may turn to gambling as an escape from sadness, stress, or constant worry."There are also “shared risk factors, including trauma, chronic stress, trouble regulating emotions, and a strong sensitivity to rewards," Hafeez says. "Once gambling becomes a problem, it can actually make a person’s mental health worse rather than simply existing alongside it."Gambling disorder "often appears as part of a larger mental health picture rather than completely on its own," Hafeez adds.Something else to consider, per Bartelt: People who are already undergoing mental health care may be more likely to have a gambling disorder recognized and diagnosed compared to those who aren't seeking care for mental health.Why are women more at risk?The study wasn't able to determine that—it just found that women were more likely to have pre-existing mental health diagnoses compared to men. But there are a few theories."Women experience depression and anxiety at higher rates than men, which may help explain why emotional escape can play a bigger role in gambling problems for women," Hafeez says. "Gambling can temporarily pull someone's attention away from worry, sadness, loneliness, or problems at home, even though those feelings are still there afterward."For a woman who feels overwhelmed with responsibilities and rarely has time to herself, gambling may feel like one of the ways she can mentally check out, Hafeez says. "That is where the risk becomes greater, because gambling is no longer just something she does for fun; instead, it has become one of the ways she manages difficult emotions," she says.What's the takeaway?The findings underscore that a gambling habit rarely exists in isolation. "More than half of the women who later received a gambling disorder diagnosis already had depression or anxiety, suggesting that gambling may sometimes develop in the context of existing emotional struggles," Hafeez says.The findings also suggest that healthcare providers should try to dig deeper when someone is diagnosed with gambling disorder, according to Bartelt. "A gambling disorder diagnosis could be a signal for healthcare providers to look more closely at a person's overall mental health rather than treating the gambling as a separate issue," she says.