engleski

Some forensic-psychiatric aspects of gambling

The history notes that the men have always used gambling as a way of recreation. During the last two decades, gambling has drawn much attention as an economic, legal, sociological, criminological and psychological phenomenon. The studies have revealed some new approaches towards gambling, but also left numerous dillemmas. The International classification of diseases and related health problems (ICD-X) mentions two disturbances connected to gambling: gambling and betting, and pathological inclination towards gambling. The individuals with psychiatric diagnoses are exposed to greater hazard of becoming pathologic gamblers. Many efforts to create some more practical classification of gamblers have resulted in following classification: (1) social gamblers, (2) serious social gamblers, (3) problem gamblers, (4) pathological gamblers, (5) professional gamblers and (6) criminal gamblers. The subject of our study were the pathological gamblers who perform criminal acts. The diagnosis of pathological gambling does not reduce responsibility before the law, but should be a factor that is to be taken into consideration when measuring the sentence. Mental competence of a gambler ranges from being competent to being incompetent via the impaired mental competence, ranging from significant to not significant impairment. Regardless if there are elements of a criminal act or not, pathological gamblers are individuals desperately needing the psychiatric help, because the experience shows that referring the patients to psychiatric services reduces the risk of relapses.

gambling; expert evaluation; mental competence

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