COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — A local family is hoping that sharing their experience with problem gambling can help others who are struggling.
With March Madness about to begin, it’s a popular time for sports fans and others to watch college basketball. It’s also a time when a lot of people will bet on games.
Dr. Ranjana Sinha and her family often watch sports together, but recently, they’ve changed how they watch.
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“When people ask me when is it that you knew, there was never really one isolated incident,” Sinha said. “It was just a series of events.”
Her son was in college and started playing poker with friends. Sinha said what started as a social activity turned into playing every night, then to problematic online sports betting and an addiction.
“Gambling, it’s not like your grandpa’s gambling landscape,” she said. “They don’t go to the casinos, they don’t go to the slot machines, it’s a very different landscape.”
She and her husband ended up taking their son out of school to get him help. They realized they needed help, too, when it came to learning how to best support their son. The journey led their son to a month-long residential program and them to helping start Parents Standing Together, a non-profit to support parents of kids with a gambling problem.
“I want to give a message of hope,” Sinha said. “Our youth who are affected by gambling harm and affected others like myself and my husband, we need to know, everybody needs to know they’re not alone.”
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Sinha is a pediatrician. She said screenings for gambling harm are now done at her practice. As people get ready to watch game after game of college basketball, she and her son want to remind people about what the game is all about.
“He would say, he was so adamant about this, he was like, ‘Watch the games in a healthy way, enjoy it,’” Sinha said. “‘Don’t worry about the spread, the overs, the unders, or the parlays.’ we have to get back to watching sports purely for the enjoyment of watching sports.”
Sinha’s son is now in recovery. He leads meetings to help others in similar situations to the one he was once in.
“He wants to help young people and doing what I do, being in the pediatric space, seeing that come from him, it just, really, it fills my soul,” she said. “My husband and I couldn’t be more proud of how far he’s come.”
Calls to the problem gambling helpline increase from around the time of the Super Bowl through March Madness, according to Derek Longmeier, executive director of the Problem Gambling Network of Ohio. He urged people to set limits and stick to them.
“And really looking at limits of both dollars spent as well as time spent, and if you can stick to those limits, then those are pretty low-risk ways to bet on sports, assuming you’re of age,” Longmeier said. “We get into bigger problems when people are going over their limits or trying to chase back their losses.”
For more information on the organization, visit its website by clicking here.
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