gambling disorders

This year’s Gambling Disorder Screening Day is Tuesday, March 10, 2020. Sponsored by the Division on Addiction, Cambridge Health Alliance, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, the event offers 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. To learn more about the Toolkit and how to navigate it, visit www.divisiononaddiction.org.

Recovery capital (RC) has been used as a conceptual framework for substance abuse disorders that pinpoints internal and external resources that individuals can use to facilitate recovery[CR1]  from disorder.  More specifically, these resources can include: resources one has from relationships, assetts such as housing and diet, hopes, skills, education, and personal value and belief systems.

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.

On Wednesday, Oct. 30 from 2 to 3 p.m., the NCRG will hold the last session in the NCRG’s Webinar Series, titled “Addiction as Syndrome: Implications for Understanding and Treating Gambling Disorders and Other Addictive Disorders.” You can register for this free session online on the NCRG’s webinar webpage.

In just over a week, stakeholders in the fields of gambling disorders, addiction and responsible gaming will gather at the 14th annual NCRG Conference on Gambling and Addiction at The Sands Expo and Convention Center at the Venetian Las Vegas.

The 2013 NCRG Conference will feature national leaders in gambling disorder research and treatment, public health, academia and the gaming industry and will present on key topics that will unite the field of gambling disorders and responsible gaming.

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?

This post was written by Amy Kugler, the NCRG’s communications and outreach manager. Make sure to follow all of the NCRG’s activities on Twitter and Facebook.

Christine Reilly, Nathan Smith and I have been traveling quite a bit lately. As you’ve probably seen by our posts on Gambling Disorders 360, Facebook and Twitter, we had a wonderful time and learned a great amount of information at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual conference in San Francisco. We were happy to meet new people and forge new partnerships, and had a unique opportunity to educate more than 13,000 psychiatrists about gambling disorders and the changes with the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

On Monday May 20, Nora Volkow, M.D., director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), reported on new research findings and treatment opportunities at an hour-long lecture for the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting. Because of the high rate of co-occurring addictive disorders among individuals with a gambling disorder, it is important to keep abreast of new developments in the field of substance use disorders.

To clarify the various revisions in the American Psychiatric Association's fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) relating to gambling disorders, the National Center for Responsible Gaming (NCRG) authored a white paper, titled "The Evolving Defintion of Pathological Gambling in the DSM-5." Below is an excerpt of that white paper that outlines the specific changes. For a free download of the white paper, visit www.ncrg.org/resources/white-papers. 

Today, the NCRG staff is traveling to San Francisco to prepare for the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) annual meeting. The buildup for this event is coming to a peak as the APA releases their highly anticipated fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-5) on May 21. Christine Reilly, Nathan Smith and Amy Kugler will be on-site to provide the latest information about DSM-5 revisions, updates from the conference and insights from the conference sessions.