Letter: Service providers need to know the dangers of problem gambling

In a county where two casinos are within a very short driving distance, there is no excuse for service providers, law enforcement and circuit court judges to be uninformed about problem gambling or the high rate of incidents of domestic violence among those who have gambling disorders…and yet many of you are uninformed. By the way, it’s your job to be informed.

It’s time that y’all do your homework. See cheat sheet below.

The major revisions from 4 edition of the DSM (i.e., DSM-IV-TR) to DSM-5 include: (1) reclassification of pathological gambling from Impulse Control Disorders to a newly created category labeled “Substance-Related and Addictive Disorders” that also includes substance use disorders, (2) renaming of pathological gambling to gambling disorder, (3) removal of the illegal acts criterion, and (4) lowering the diagnostic threshold for diagnosis from five to four criteria.

Scientists found that those with a gambling or substance use disorder experience increased connectivity to the reward system and decreased activity to the prefrontal cortex. The reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex may also explain why those with a gambling disorder tend to have more difficulty controlling their impulses than other people. (The Gateway Foundation)

Dowling N., Suomi A., Jackson A., Lavis T., Patford J., Cockman S., Thomas S., Bellringer M., Koziol-Mclain J., Battersby M., Harvey P., Abbott M. (2016). Problem gambling and intimate partner violence: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Trauma Violence Abuse, 17(1), 43–61. doi: 10.1177/1524838014561269

Lorenz V. C., Shuttlesworth D. (1983). The impact of pathological gambling on the spouse of the gambler. Journal of Community Psychology, 11(1), 67–76. doi: 10.1002/1520-6629(198301)11:13.0.CO;2-O

Korman L. M., Collins J., Dutton D., Dhayananthan B., Littman-Sharp N., Skinner W. (2008). Problem gambling and intimate partner violence. Journal of Gambling Studies, 24(1), 13–23. doi: 10.1007/s10899-007-9077-1

Connie Hunter

Brookings