treatment for pathological gambling

Toll-free help lines have been a common first line of intervention for addictive disorders for many years with successful statewide tobacco help lines leading the way. While there has been research on gambling help lines since the 1990s, to our knowledge there has not been a study tracking help-line callers from their initial call to attendance at a counseling session – until now. With the percentage of people with a gambling disorder who seek treatment from a counselor, psychologist or self-help group such as Gamblers Anonymous at only between 7 and 12 percent (Slutske, 2006), the ability of a help line to promote attendance at a counseling session is vitally important. A new study published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors provides data on the matriculation of people with gambling disorders from calling the help line to attending a counseling session and suggests potential best practices for increasing the number of callers seeking treatment (Weinstock et al., 2011).

Click below for the NCRG blog team’s exclusive interview with Dr. Matthew Martens, associate professor of educational, school and counseling psychology at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Nathan Smith, program officer for the NCRG, sat down with Dr. Martens to discuss brief interventions for problem gambling and gives advice to campus health professionals on how to address gambling and gambling-related harms on campus.

The National Center for Responsible Gaming (NCRG) presented the first installment of the 2011 NCRG Webinar Series to more than 250 participants in March – one of the highest attended sessions for the NCRG. Led by Dr. Jon Grant, M.D., the webinar was titled “Gambling Disorders: What Addiction Professionals Need To Know” and cosponsored by NAADAC, the Association for Addiction Professionals.  Visit the NCRG website for an archived version of the presentation.

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).

A Sunday-evening breakout session at the 11^th annual NCRG Conference on Gambling and Addiction focused on the effectiveness of behavioral strategies and pharmacological (drug) treatments for disordered gambling.

The use of Native American traditions to heal addiction is one of the featured topics at the 11^th Annual NCRG Conference on Gambling and Addiction on Nov. 14-16, 2010, at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino and the Las Vegas Convention Center in Nev. Don Coyhis, a member of the Mohican Nation, will hold a session titled “The Wellbriety Movement: Drawing on Native American Tools to Heal from Addiction.”

Wellbriety, a combination of the words “well” and “sobriety,” is a concept of recovery that focuses on a “quality sobriety.” This concept is rooted in Native American cultural values such as respect for all living things and responsibility to self and the community. Coyhis has been teaching the concepts of Wellbriety for 20 years and has held trainings in more than 100 Native American communities, personally training more than 2,000 leaders.

The use of Native American traditions to heal addiction is one of the featured topics at the 11^th Annual NCRG Conference on Gambling and Addiction on Nov. 14-16, 2010, at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino and the Las Vegas Convention Center in Nev. Don Coyhis, a member of the Mohican Nation, will hold a session titled “The Wellbriety Movement: Drawing on Native American Tools to Heal from Addiction.”

Wellbriety, a combination of the words “well” and “sobriety,” is a concept of recovery that focuses on a “quality sobriety.” This concept is rooted in Native American cultural values such as respect for all living things and responsibility to self and the community. Coyhis has been teaching the concepts of Wellbriety for 20 years and has held trainings in more than 100 Native American communities, personally training more than 2,000 leaders.

A new review article from the principal investigators of the NCRG Centers of Excellence in Gambling Research at Yale University and the University of Minnesota explores the potential of pharmacological treatments for disordered gambling in adolescents. It is important to identify an effective treatment for this age group, as adolescents are at a higher risk for developing gambling-related problems than adults.  However, no drug trials focused on pathological gambling have been conducted with this age group.

A new review article from the principal investigators of the NCRG Centers of Excellence in Gambling Research at Yale University and the University of Minnesota explores the potential of pharmacological treatments for disordered gambling in adolescents. It is important to identify an effective treatment for this age group, as adolescents are at a higher risk for developing gambling-related problems than adults.  However, no drug trials focused on pathological gambling have been conducted with this age group.

This is the first of several of our reports from the 7th Annual Midwest Conference on Problem Gambling & Substance Abuse in Kansas City, Mo. Dr. H. Westley Clark, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), opened the conference with a keynote address on the challenges and opportunities for addressing gambling disorders. CSAT promotes community-based substance abuse treatment services as part of the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.