Missouri has made compulsive gambling prevention a new state initiative this month, with Jennifer DeLett-Snyder, the Department of Mental Health’s prevention services coordinator, overseeing it alongside substance-use and suicide prevention.
According to the News Tribune, DeLett-Snyder is already building the program’s public-facing side. She is preparing prevention providers, bringing in outside experts and working on social-media videos aimed at parents, including material to help them recognise problem gambling and gambling features inside mobile app games.
The state’s own gambling page says sports betting became legal in Missouri effective 1 December 2025. It also says the Compulsive Gambling Prevention Fund was created to support prevention, treatment and related services, and that the Division of Behavioral Health has worked with experts and agency leaders on a strategic framework to strengthen gambling-disorder treatment.
That treatment network is meant to run through Comprehensive Substance Treatment and Rehabilitation providers and Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics. Missouri also points people to its 24-hour Problem Gambling Helpline, 888-BETS-OFF, as well as the Voluntary Exclusion Program, Gamblers Anonymous and training to become a Certified Gambling Disorder Counselor.
The policy push sits against a growing body of evidence about the scale of gambling in the state. A 2022 Missouri Gambling Prevalence Study, based on a weighted sample of 3,259 adults, found that 64.1% of adult Missourians, or about 3.1 million people, gamble in some form each year.
The study said 4.1%, or about 200,000 adults, met criteria for gambling disorder, while 20.8%, or about 1 million, were at risk. It also found that risk rose with frequency: 1.2% among low-frequency gamblers, 5.7% among moderate-frequency gamblers and 13.4% among high-frequency gamblers.
Certain kinds of gambling carried especially high rates of disorder in the study, including league or season fantasy sports at 19.3%, daily fantasy sports at 17.5%, casino table or dice games at 13.3% and slot or video card machines at 12.8%. Among people who endorsed both of the maladaptive beliefs listed in the report, 42.7% met criteria for gambling disorder.
The report also flagged a mental-health toll. Across the full sample, 1.5% reported suicidal thoughts due to gambling and 1.4% reported suicide attempts due to gambling. Among those meeting gambling-disorder criteria, those figures rose to 27.5% and 27%.
DeLett-Snyder has said she understands the work from personal experience. She lived in Nevada, where gambling was legal but she said there were no prevention efforts, and she has taken classes and brought in experts to prepare Missouri’s providers.
She has also said there is overlap between substance-use prevention and gambling prevention, but there is still “plenty to learn.” The News Tribune quoted her saying she wants people to have information, and to understand how to use it to change behaviour.
The department has already debuted sports-betting warning signs during the World Cup and is preparing social-media videos to help parents spot problem gambling. A Missouri health advisory said Kansas City hosted six World Cup matches and Fan Festival events from 11 June to 11 July, with more than 650,000 visitors expected and over half of them international travellers staying an average of nine to 10 days.
Betting interest also rose during the tournament. Spectrum Local News reported that BetMGM saw a 20% increase in handle in the first two weeks compared with the same period a year earlier, while Caesars and FanDuel said several World Cup matches produced record soccer-betting activity.
The clearest warning in Missouri’s prevalence study was that suicide ideation and attempts climbed sharply among people who met the criteria for gambling disorder.
