The Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling is a private, non-profit health agency that was founded in 1983.

It provides information, promotes public awareness, and offers community education, professional training, advocacy and referral services for problem gamblers, their loved ones, and the greater community.

Problem gambling (or ludomania, but usually referred to as "gambling addiction" or "compulsive gambling") is an urge to gamble continuously despite harmful negative consequences or a desire to stop.

Problem gambling is often defined by whether harm is experienced by the gambler or others, rather than by the gambler's behavior.

Severe problem gambling may be diagnosed as clinical pathological gambling if the gambler meets certain criteria.

Pathological gambling is a common disorder that is associated with both social and family costs.

Finance is a field that deals with the study of investments.

It includes the dynamics of assets and liabilities over time under conditions of different degrees of uncertainty and risk.

Finance can also be defined as the science of money management.

Finance aims to price assets based on their risk level and their expected rate of return.

Finance can be broken into three different sub-categories: public finance, corporate finance and personal finance.

Health is the level of functional and metabolic efficiency of a living organism.

In humans it is the ability of individuals or communities to adapt and self-manage when facing physical, mental or social changes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defined health in its broader sense in its 1948 constitution as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." This definition has been subject to controversy, in particular as lacking operational value, the ambiguity in developing cohesive health strategies, and because of the problem created by use of the word "complete".

Other definitions have been proposed, among which a recent definition that correlates health and personal satisfaction.

Social science is a major category of academic disciplines, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society.

It in turn has many branches, each of which is considered a "social science".

The main social sciences include economics, political science, human geography, demography, psychology, and sociology.

In a wider sense, social science also includes some fields in the humanities such as anthropology, archaeology, jurisprudence, history, and linguistics.

The term is also sometimes used to refer specifically to the field of sociology, the original 'science of society', established in the 19th century.

A more detailed list of sub-disciplines within the social sciences can be found at Outline of social science.