Each year, the NCRG Conference on Gambling and Addiction provides an opportunity for researchers, clinicians, regulators and other stakeholders to come together, listen to research and programs from leading experts and share their experiences with gambling disorders. One of the benefits of this interaction is that the NCRG staff gets to learn directly from attendees, especially public health officials, about the speakers and topics they might find useful in their work.
One such topic that was overwhelmingly requested was the cluster of disorders previously called “mood disorders” (e.g., major depressive disorder). It turns out that the experiences of gambling treatment providers—of which many have clients with mood disorders in addition to a gambling disorder—are echoed in the published research. The National Comorbidity Study-Replication (NCS-R), one of the largest studies of mental health comorbidity in the country, found that more than 55 percent of people with a gambling disorder also had a comorbid mood disorder (Kessler, 2008).