GAMBLING DISORDERS 360°

Opportunities to gamble have increased starkly over the last 50 years, and with it has come a shift in social attitude towards gambling. Wendy Slutske, PhD, recipient of a 2017 NCRG Center of Excellence Grant, set out to compare the role of genetics and environment from two National Twin Studies, collected about 50 years apart, on propensity to gamble.

The Division on Addiction at Cambridge Health Alliance, a Teaching Hospital of Harvard Medical School, is sponsoring Gambling Disorder Screening Day on Tuesday, March 13, 2018. This year’s Screening Day Toolkit has even more free resources to make hosting Screening Day easier than ever. Any provider or organization can host. Registration is not required to use these free resources.

“Gambling Disorder & Addiction: Treatment, Prevention and Education” will be held for treatment providers on March 21-22, 2018 at the Sandia Resort & Casino in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The program, cosponsored by NCRG and Sandia Resort & Casino, will cover a wide range of topics including responsible gaming, new research on gambling disorder, gambling problems among the military and veterans, the stigma of gambling disorder, motivational interviewing and Wellbriety, a Native American recovery movement.

"NAADAC, the Association for Addiction Professionals, and the National Center for Responsible Gaming (NCRG) invite you to participate in a brief survey to explore the possibility of a new national credential designed to recognize individuals with a specialty in gambling disorders.

The National Center for Responsible Gaming (NCRG) is pleased to announce the availability of research grants for the study of gambling disorder in 2018. The NCRG is committed to a multi-disciplinary approach and, therefore, welcomes applications from investigators in psychology, psychiatry, epidemiology, public health, sociology, economics, neuroeconomics, neuroscience and other relevant disciplines.

The Responsible Gaming Association of New Mexico (RGANM), a collaboration of many of the state’s Native American owned casinos, awarded NCRG with a grant of $300,000 to coordinate a competitive grants program on the impact of gambling on New Mexico, especially the state’s subpopulations. In December 2017, the NCRG awarded a grant of $291,868 to HBSA, a supporting organization of Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, to fund “New Mexico: A Study of at risk Youth and Adults.”

A recently published article in the peer-reviewed journal Addiction & Research Theory provided a new model for evaluating responsible gambling research. To ensure its dissemination beyond academia, the NCRG produced a white paper summarizing the study’s findings. The white paper, Responsible Gambling: A Review of the Research, is available for download at www.ncrg.org (click on Resources and White Papers).

Although adolescents are particularly prone to environmental influences as they come into young adult age, few studies have looked at the effect that genetics versus environment has on gambling behaviors.  Serena King, PhD, a 2006 New Investigator grantee of the National Center for Responsible Gaming, built upon her prior work looking at personality, gender, and family history in the prediction of college gambling, with this 2017 longitudinal twin study.

What is the aim of this review?

The gaming industry broke all previous fundraising records at the 19th annual AGEM/AGA Golf Classic Presented by JCM Global, bringing in an astounding $155,000. Proceeds directly benefit research conducted by the National Center for Responsible Gaming (NCRG). To date, the Golf Classic has raised more than $1.7 million to advance the NCRG’s important research.

“We are thrilled that the golf classic broke all records this year. The money will help NCRG find effective treatment for gambling disorder,” said NCRG executive director Russell Sanna.