Abstract
Psychiatric disorders among pathological and problem gamblers, especially mood and anxiety, are especially prevalent. Little is known about the rates of psychopathology in active and recovered problem gamblers. The goal of the present study was to compare the rates of lifetime and concurrent psychiatric comorbidity in a sample of problem and recovered gamblers in the community, controlling for severity and duration of the gambling problem. In this study a sample of community-recruited pathological and untreated but recovered gamblers were assessed with a validated structured clinical interview. Consistent with previous research high rates of mood and anxiety disorders, both current and lifetime, were found among current and recovered problem gamblers. Lifetime psychopathology was not a significant predictor of gambling status. The variables that significantly predicted PG or RG were prior history of drug problems and a positive family history for problem gambling.
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Tony Toneatto and Sabina Pillai declares that they have no conflict of interest.
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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.
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This research was supported by Contract RFP99–044 from the Ontario Substance Abuse Bureau of the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.
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Toneatto, T., Pillai, S. Mood and Anxiety Disorders Are the Most Prevalent Psychiatric Disorders among Pathological and Recovered Gamblers. Int J Ment Health Addiction 14, 217–227 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-016-9647-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-016-9647-5