Research Update

Did you know that only about 15 percent of disordered gamblers in the US seek treatment or attend self-help groups (Slutske, 2006)? However, nearly half of lifetime disordered gamblers received treatment for some other mental or substance problem (Kessler et al., 2008). According to the National Comorbidity Survey Replication, increased screening for emerging gambling problems in clients already in treatment might be an opportunity to prevent full-blown gambling disorders (Kessler et al., 2008).

Who will be the next generation of gambling researchers? The NCRG is not leaving this question to chance. Since 2004, the NCRG has funded grants specifically designed to offer new investigators the opportunity to focus on a research project under the mentorship of senior scientists. The NCRG is proud of the many accomplishments of these emerging scientists.

We're excited that the first recipient of an NCRG new investigator grant, Silvia Martins, M.D., Ph.D., has been awarded a $656,465 grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to continue her work on “Predictors of High-Risk Behaviors Among Youth.” Dr. Martins is now associate professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Who will be the next generation of gambling researchers? The NCRG is not leaving this question to chance. Since 2004, the NCRG has funded grants specifically designed to offer new investigators the opportunity to focus on a research project under the mentorship of senior scientists. The NCRG is proud of the many accomplishments of these emerging scientists.

Recently, we were heartened to learn that the first recipient of an NCRG new investigator grant, Silvia Martins, M.D., Ph.D., has been awarded a $656,465 grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to continue her work on “Predictors of High-Risk Behaviors Among Youth.” Dr. Martins is now associate professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Many people may not know that 95 percent of people with gambling disorder also have another mental health disorder as well (Kessler et al., 2008). This stunning reality should influence every aspect of how researchers, clinicians and even the media approach the topic of understanding, diagnosing and treating gambling disorders. This co-occurrence of multiple disorders in an individual (called “comorbidity”) presents many unique challenges for the identification and treatment of gambling disorder. Research that can provide insights into comorbid conditions can be beneficial for clinicians and researchers alike.

One recent study on this topic came from Iman Parhami, M.D., M.P.H., a psychiatry resident at the Delaware Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health, who conducted a survey to examine many health-related issues associated with gambling behaviors and other demographic data. Longtime readers may remember that Dr. Parhami won the outstanding poster award at the NCRG conference in 2011.

One of the goals of the NCRG research program is to provide initial funding for innovative research studies so that researchers can leverage their findings for larger grants to continue and expand their studies. Researchers from the University of British Columbia have made great strides by continuing the line of study from their NCRG-funded research that began almost seven years ago.

In 2006, the NCRG awarded a new investigator grant to Catherine Winstanley, Ph.D., from the University of British Columbia, to test a new model of gambling behavior in rats, based on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT).

When a new opportunity to gamble – whether a casino, the lottery or other forms of gambling – comes into a community, assumptions swirl around about whether or not the rate of disordered gambling will increase. Does exposure to gambling opportunities pose a risk to our health and increase the rate of gambling problems in a community?

The debut of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) at the upcoming APA annual meeting might be regarded as the year’s most anticipated event in the mental health field. Its release has been covered in the media, including the Washington Post and The New York Times, and experts have weighed in with their view of how this publication will impact clinicians, researchers and those diagnosed with mental disorders. However, an initiative underway for several years at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) could have more far-reaching effects on the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders and addiction.

In the spirit of end-of-the-year highlights lists, the NCRG staff perused the approximately 500 peer-reviewed publications released in 2012 to determine the most noteworthy studies in the field of gambling disorders and addiction.

Narrowing our list of 10 publications was a challenging task. Therefore, we decided to highlight articles that may predict future trends in research. We salute these authors and all of the investigators who are working to understand gambling disorders.

Do people with gambling disorders think differently than those without? The answer is yes and no. One might assume that a person who is diagnosed with a gambling disorder must predictably and consistently make harmful choices. While this thought is true, research on decision making has shown that all humans make consistent and predictable cognitive errors (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Thus, finding and exploring the differences in cognitive errors made by people with and without a gambling disorder may offer valuable insights into understanding how gambling disorders impact the decision-making process. Correcting these cognitive distortions is also an important element in several common treatments for pathological gambling, and it has been theorized that merely teaching probability and reasoning skills may be able to prevent pathological gambling before it starts (though research has not yet supported this theory).

For college students, fall can be a time where they place bets on college football games and arrange their lineup in their fantasy football leagues. Researchers have found that about 75 percent of college students have gambled in the past year and about 6 percent have experienced problems with their gambling (Barnes, Welte, Hoffman, & Tidwell, 2010).  One recent study has started to address this issue by putting to the test two promising treatment methods for college students experiencing gambling problems in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) (Larimer et al., 2011).

This study is of special interest to us at the NCRG because we recently funded one of the researchers to develop an online version of a personalized feedback intervention, one of the treatments tested in this article, for our web-based resource about gambling on college campuses: www.CollegeGambling.org.