GAMBLING DISORDERS 360°

Treatment and prevention are two of the most important and challenging areas for addiction researchers. Prevention is a particularly difficult undertaking even when working with the most understood disorders, and can be even more difficult in an emerging field such as gambling disorders. One way to advance prevention research is to better understand the relationship between pathological gambling (PG) and psychological traits that have been more thoroughly studied. One recent study by Erica Fortune and Adam Goodie, Ph.D., at the University of Georgia, takes this approach. The study, which was published in the December 2010 edition of the Journal of Gambling Studies (Fortune & Goodie, 2009), was partially funded by a grant from the NCRG to Dr. Goodie and attempts to clarify the relationship between PG and sensation seeking.

Society’s beliefs about a health condition can have a huge impact on the people who suffer from the disorder. Public opinion can influence public health policy, public and private harm minimization efforts, research funds, and treatment support. At the individual level, negative public views of a disease and the stigma it creates can strongly discourage individuals from admitting that they have the problem and seeking treatment. There is little data available on public opinion of gambling disorders; however, a new study published in the Journal of Gambling Studies fills this void with a systematic examination of public opinion on gambling disorders (Cunningham, Cordingley, Hodgins, & Toneatto, 2011).

Society’s beliefs about a health condition can have a huge impact on the people who suffer from the disorder. Public opinion can influence public health policy, public and private harm minimization efforts, research funds, and treatment support. At the individual level, negative public views of a disease and the stigma it creates can strongly discourage individuals from admitting that they have the problem and seeking treatment. There is little data available on public opinion of gambling disorders; however, a new study published in the Journal of Gambling Studies fills this void with a systematic examination of public opinion on gambling disorders (Cunningham, Cordingley, Hodgins, & Toneatto, 2011).

Jon E. Grant, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., principal investigator of the NCRG Center of Excellence at the University of Minnesota, was inducted into the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) at the ACNP meeting in December 2010. Founded in 1961, ACNP is the nation's premier professional society in brain, behavior and psychopharmacology research.

While there have been a number of studies conducted on youth gambling, there is no clear consensus about whether gambling rates in this population are increasing, decreasing, or staying the same. Recent reviews of the literature have yielded mixed conclusions and found a variety of results depending on when, where, and how the research was conducted (e.g., Volberg, Gupta, Griffiths, Olason, & Delfabbro, 2010; Jacobs, 2004).

Gambling and gambling related problems are common among all racial and ethnic groups in the United States, but there is new evidence that African Americans are more likely to experience gambling-related problems than white Americans. Differences in problem and pathological Gambling (PPG) among people of different races are not well understood. A better understanding of gambling behaviors, gambling problem severity and other psychiatric disorders associated with PPG in minority populations could benefit gambling prevention and treatment programs. For this reason we have devoted the February edition of Issues & Insights to new research on the differences in gambling behavior and PPG between black and white Americans.

A recently published study by Dr. Declan Barry and colleagues (Barry, Stefanovics, Desai, & Potenza, 2011) analyzed data from The National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), the largest prevalence study of psychiatric disorders in the United States (Petry, Stinson, & Grant, 2005). Dr. Barry and co-authors compared black and white respondents on measures of gambling behavior, PPG, mental health, and the co-occurrence of mental disorders and gambling. In the following interview, Dr. Barry clarifies and expands on the findings in his recent paper. 

The National Center for Responsible Gaming is pleased to announce it has allocated more than $700,000 for grants in support of research on prevention and treatment of gambling disorders in 2011. The grants, ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 per year, will be awarded on a competitive basis. Applicants may seek one-year Exploration and Seed Grants to fund pilot data, a new direction on an existing project, secondary analysis of existing data, or small, self-contained research projects. Large Grants of up to $75,000 per year for two years are available for more extensive research projects.

Although pathological gambling (PG) has been recognized as a psychological disorder since 1980, there are still no FDA-approved medications to treat the disorder. Until now, most pharmacological treatments for PG have been adapted from treatments from other addictive disorders such as alcohol dependence. A recently published article in the journal Psychopharmacology reports on the use of a drug from an unexpected source: a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease (Grant, Chamberlain, Odlaug, Potenza, & Kim, 2010).

With publication of the DSM-5 likely to move Pathological Gambling from its current clinical classification as an Impulse Control Disorder to a new category called “Addiction and Related Disorders,” there is growing interest in other potential “behavioral addictions.” One such behavior, video game playing, is the subject of a new study conducted by researchers at Yale University School of Medicine and published in the journal Pediatrics (Desai, Krishnan-Sarin, Cavallo, & Potenza, 2010).

Gambling among ethnic and racial minorities, especially indigenous groups, is an important and largely untapped area for research, which has historically fallen short of its potential because of tensions between researchers and aboriginal peoples. For example, in the U.S., many Native Americans believe that research conducted on their tribes, especially projects on addictive behaviors, has been characterized by unethical practices (as discussed in our Jan. 2010 Issues & Insights). Reminding us that these issues have worldwide import, a recent study published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health explores the relationships between researchers and Indigenous Australians, and proposes several practical solutions to these problems in the context of a community survey of gambling behaviors of aboriginal Australians (Hing, Breen, & Gordon, 2010).