Abstract: The first two casino resorts built on the roadway that became the Las Vegas Strip broke new ground in several ways. The El Rancho Vegas inaugurated the winning combination of gambling, dining, entertainment and vacation amenities that has become the basis of the casino gaming industry. The Hotel Last Frontier was the first truly “themed” casino that encouraged patrons to lose themselves in a fantasy world of Old West nostalgia while vacationing and gambling within the casino. These two casinos originated two concepts that would define American casino gaming into the next century: self-contained vacation pleasure within a suburban resort and the heady use of lavish theming to encourage patronage. https://jgi.camh.net/index.php/jgi/article/download/3570/3530?inline=1 Understanding their stories deepens appreciation of the history and current reality of casino gaming.
Abstract: As compulsive gambling and problem gamblers attract continued and increasing attention – due to state reliance on gambling for revenues and government and private marketing of the gambling experience – conceptions of compulsive, or addictive, gambling have evolved. The disease model of alcoholism and drug addiction, which predominates in the U.S. and North America, has generally been widely adopted for purposes of understanding and addressing gambling problems. However, this model fails to explain the most fundamental aspects of compulsive drinking and drug taking, so it can hardly do better with gambling. For example, people regularly outgrow addictions – often without ever labelling themselves as addicts. Indeed, gambling provides a vivid and comprehensible example of an experiential model of addiction. Elements of an addiction model that gambling helps to elucidate are the cycle of excitement and escape followed by loss and depression, reliance on magical thinking, failure to value or practice functional problem solving and manipulative orientation towards others.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine the appropriateness of the current classification of pathological gambling as an Impulse Control Disorder. Controversy over the current categorization is as heated as it has ever been with more research suggesting that gambling is in fact not strictly an impulse-driven behaviour. Research also shows that pathological gambling is similar in presentation and treatment outcome to other addictive behaviours such as alcohol and substance abuse. Given such findings, it is arguable that pathological gambling needs to be re-examined in terms of where it fits into a psychiatric classification system.
