The month of March was Problem Gambling Awareness Month. The title was created in hopes of creating more public awareness on the topic, as well as spreading the word on the available treatment and recovery services.

Gambling can become easily addictive, interfering with a person’s everyday life.

A problem gambler lets gambling get in the way of work or school, harms a person’s physical or mental health or hurts a person financially.

This national topic was brought to a local level and discussed at the Community Foundation of Greene County building in Waynesburg at a gambling public forum, sponsored by Greene County Human Services.

The Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs awarded grants to several counties across the state to help study and fight problem gambling. For the past few weeks, the group, tasked with studying the problem in Washington and Butler Counties, also retrieved data from Greene County to help better understand the problem in this region.

“They awarded grants to various counties across Pennsylvania to implement problem gambling initiatives,” said Bruce Decker, owner of Collective Impact, who led the public forum. “The casinos fund DDAP; a certain percentage of their revenues as part of the requirements for them to get their license [go towards doing] drug and alcohol programs in the community.”

The public forum had the testimony from a person in recovery, Melanie Pivarnik, who elaborated on her escalation into the gambling world and why it got so troublesome.

“Instead of talking to someone about my problems, I would run to the casinos because I had no one telling me no,” said Pivarnik. “There was always the hope of winning at a casino.”

Her discussion helped shed light on other important topics and studies, like the ones ongoing in both Washington County and Butler County. They have uncovered that, according to statistics provided, three in four problem gamblers have a major depressive order. This makes it even more difficult to diagnose problem gamblers and to have them realize they may have a problem.

With gambling being a ‘legal escape’ for some, it can be easy for most to become lost in the excitement of trying to win.

This doesn’t only pertain to the traditional casino atmosphere that most would expect; multiple other forms of gambling can be destructive, such as online betting in fantasy sports, dog and horse racing, fairs and carnivals, the stock market and much more.

The public forum stressed the importance of raising such awareness for problem gambling and how ingrained betting is into American culture, which can cause numerous problems.

DDAP hopes to continue to promote multiple messages year after year in helping to attempt to tackle this issue.

“I think it’s a multiple unified message, it’s not one message; it’s to raise awareness, to make sure people understand that there are resources out there and to help make resources available,” said Decker, “from prevention all the way to treatment and intervention, so the whole continuum of care.”