Gambling good for your health? Perhaps among the elderly, according to a new report.

A phone survey revealed that elderly people who said they gambled occasionally during the past year were more likely to rate their general health as good or excellent than those who never gambled.

In recent years, recreational gambling has become increasingly popular, particularly among the elderly.

A recent study showed that gambling is the biggest social activity among nursing home residents, and around one-quarter attend bingo games at least four times each month

Recently, experts have raised concerns about the effects of gambling on the elderly, given that they tend to use highly addictive slot machines, and often have restricted incomes and are often unable to work to recover any losses they incur while playing.

In the general population, people who engage in recreational gambling - meaning they gamble but it doesn’t interfere with their lives - show high rates of depression, alcohol abuse and incarceration. However, they also appear to have higher rates of good health than non-gamblers.

To investigate the effects of gambling on health in the elderly, Dr. Rani A. Desai and her colleagues from Yale University in Connecticut interviewed a representative sample of 2,417 adults about their health and gambling habits. Participants indicated their history of alcohol and substance use, mental health treatment, and how healthy they thought they were.

Desai and her team found that 50 percent of the elderly had gambled during the past year, and older recreational gamblers were more than twice as likely to say they were in good or excellent general health than older non-gamblers.

There did not appear to be a relationship between gambling and good health in younger participants, the authors note.

The reasons the findings remain unclear. However, Desai and her team suggest that the elderly may benefit from the “increased activity, socialization, and cognitive stimulation that are related to engaging in gambling.”

The authors note that these results do not apply to compulsive gambling, affecting around 5 percent of adults. Previous research has linked the problem to a number of ills, they write, including poor general health and mental health problems.

SOURCE: American Journal of Psychiatry, September 2004.