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Benjamin Westermeyer
Health economics and policy PhD student at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researching the mental health effects of online sports betting legalization.
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Oct 14, 2026
Online Sports Betting Legalization and Behavioral Health Care Use
9:20

John TorousHOST
But what do you think are, say, the top three that you want to make sure listeners hear now? And again, there's so many interesting, fascinating ones in this data set, but let's give the top three.
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9:33Benjamin WestermeyerGUEST
Yeah, for the first, I would say it's that online sports betting legalization was associated with an increase in antidepressant use and anti-anxiety use among both men and women.
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9:46Benjamin WestermeyerGUEST
And these increases grew over time from the first year post-legalization to the fifth year.
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9:55Benjamin WestermeyerGUEST
The second takeaway is that we don't find any significant effects for more acute forms of mental health care, like emergency department visits or inpatient admissions related to mental health care.
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10:07Benjamin WestermeyerGUEST
And we also don't find any changes in health care use related to substance use disorder, which I think is also important.
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10:15Benjamin WestermeyerGUEST
We looked at both mental health-related utilization and substance use utilization because both of these have a pretty strong overlap with gambling problems.
JAMA Psychiatry : Online Sports Betting Legalization and Behavioral Health Care Use
9:20

John TorousHOST
But what do you think are, say, the top three that you want to make sure listeners hear now? And again, I'm just-- There's so many interesting, fascinating ones in this data set, but let's give the top three.
B
9:33Benjamin WestermeyerGUEST
For the first, I would say it's that online sports betting legalization was associated with an increase in antidepressant use and anti-anxiety use among both men and women, and these increases grew over time from, you know, the first year post-legalization to the fifth year.
B
9:55Benjamin WestermeyerGUEST
The second takeaway is that we don't find any significant effects for more acute forms of mental health care, like emergency department visits or inpatient admissions related to mental health care.
B
10:07Benjamin WestermeyerGUEST
And we also don't find any changes in healthcare use related to substance use disorder, which I think is also important.
B
10:15Benjamin WestermeyerGUEST
We looked at both mental health related utilization and substance use utilization because both of these have pretty strong overlap with gambling problems.