Kindbridge Behavioral Health and Kindbridge Research Institute’s own Daniel Umfleet (view bio) has been making the rounds this October, 2025. He was recently featured as a keynote speaker at the 26th ICRG Conference on Gambling and Addiction in Las Vegas, Nevada. You can watch his presentation titled “Mind, Money, and Risk: Reframing Gambling as a Public Health Issue” right here. From there, Umfleet headed to the Sports and Society Initiative at Ohio State University (OSU) this past October 27 as part of the panel for Betting Beyond Your Means: The Cost of Problem Gambling.
Betting Beyond Your Means was public conversation that brought together experts from gambling policy, treatment, research, and community outreach. The discussion highlighted both the financial and human costs of gambling addiction, including a look at mental health struggles, academic consequences, and the toll gambling harms take on student career aspirations and their families. It fostered an in-depth conversation about the growing impact of problem gambling on the OSU campus, within Columbus communities, and across the state of Ohio – lessons that can inform stakeholders in regulated states throughout the nation. As if in a premonitory turn of events (considering the recent scandal) the panel also featured former NBA star Randy Livingston. Livingston shared his story about a crippling gambling addiction that ultimately sent him to rehab in 2017.
Other panel members included the following:
- Nicole Kraft , Moderator
- Michael Buzzelli, Director of Problem Gambling Services at the Ohio Casino Control Commission)
- Cory Fox, FanDuel
- Michael Wohl, Responsible Gambling researcher
- Derek Longmeier, Problem Gambling Network of Ohio
Many of the expected of items were discussed in Betting Beyond Your Means (i.e. how technology has bolstered gambling behavior, peer pressure, etc.). However, Daniel Umfleet touched on bigger picture items that are often overlooked in similar panels. For instance, he addressed how members of the Millennial generation today look at gambling as a means of supplementing income during uncertain economic times, and how this erroneous way of thinking negatively spills over into other aspects of their lives:
” Financial stress is related to gambling behavior. Examples are starting to emerge in individuals who are 35-40 years old. They’re still out with their buddies every once in awhile, and see them celebrate the victories, thinking ‘This is interesting’. At the same time, they’re dealing with inflation. They haven’t gotten a raise in two years, whatever it might be. Healthcare costs are going up, they’re thinking about how to shore-up the gap, and are thinking ‘OK cool, this is something that I can lean into a little bit to shore up the gap’. And then they lose, they go back, they try again, and they get into this pattern, and every once in awhile they do get a win. But ultimately what they are doing is not monitoring what the total losses equate to. Then all of a sudden they start driving Uber. They are away from the family more, and it compounds the stress in the marriage. They don’t recognize that these things are issues. And so you have to look at the whole situation of anyone dealing with this, and look at the behavior pattern that is developing, and the deeper mental health issues that are going on with the person.” (Daniel Unfleet, Betting Beyond Your Means)
We encourage readers to do a deeper dive on the insightful discussion, which was filmed for public consumption. You can watch in its entirety below:
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