Pathological gambling

The increasing incidence of psychological pains, burnout, and anxiety among gamblers in Nigeria is high. This is because pathological gambling (PG) is on the rise and it is linked to many social vices such as stealing, drug abuse, and sexual abuse. It is important to investigate the trajectories of PG in Nigeria. A cross-sectional survey design was employed in our study with 197 participants sampled from 28 gambling venues in Nigeria made up the study's sample size. Of the 197, 131 (66.5%) were males and 66 (33...

Over the last century, there has been a growing interest in researching pathological gambling, particularly in industrialized nations. Historically, gambling was widely perceived as morally questionable, condemned by religious groups. However, contemporary concerns have shifted towards the health repercussions of gambling disorders and broader societal impacts like increased crime and money laundering. Governments, aiming to mitigate social harm, often regulate or directly oversee gambling activities. The global surge in legal gambling has resulted in a substantial rise in its prevalence, popularity, and accessibility in the last two decades...

Addiction is a dynamic field. Its ongoing changes reflect a persistent but evolving public health problem. Its evolution is reflected in subsequent classifications of mental illness. Numerous theories, inspired by psychoanalysis and neurobiology, address the development of the addictive process an many factors explain differences in susceptibility between individuals. In the last decade, behavioural addictions have been the subject of intense debate, leading to the inclusion of gambling disorder in the latest classification...

OBJECTIVE: Data on the pharmacological treatment of gambling disorder are limited. Silymarin (derived from milk thistle) has antioxidant properties. The goal of the current study was to determine the efficacy and tolerability of silymarin in adults with gambling disorder. METHODS: Forty-three individuals (18 [41.9%] women; mean age=49.61 [±13.1] years) with gambling disorder entered an 8-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Dosing of silymarin ranged from 150 to 300 mg twice a day...

INTRODUCTION: In the last 20 years, gambling has become more and more widespread in Italy. The aim of the present study is to compare the motivations for gambling and the emotions felt while gambling in three different subgroups: scratch card gamblers, slot-machine gamblers, and casino gamblers. METHODS: Three versions of a questionnaire have been distributed in a casino, in scratch card vendors, and slot-machines venues. All versions included sociodemographic variables, the two-question Lie-Bet instrument, a scale for motivations toward gambling, and a list of positive and negative emotions felt while gambling...

We use the synthetic control method to examine whether land-based gambling ban has an effect on crime in a given city. In a sample of four Czech cities where the ban was introduced, we show that these cities had roughly the same crime rate development in the years after the ban as the control cities without the ban, showing that there is no significant impact. As this is, to our knowledge, the first use of the synthetic control method in the context of gambling, the main contribution of this study lies in demonstrating the possibilities in its use...

PURPOSE: Aberrant dopaminergic function is linked with motor, psychotic, and affective symptoms, but studies have typically compared a single patient group with healthy controls. METHODS: Here, we investigated the variation in striatal (caudate nucleus, nucleus accumbens, and putamen) and thalamic type 2 dopamine receptor (D2 R) availability using [11 C]raclopride positron emission tomography (PET) data from a large sample of 437 humans including healthy controls, and subjects with Parkinson's disease (PD), antipsychotic-naïve schizophrenia, severe violent behavior, pathological gambling, depression, and overweight...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Impulse control disorders (ICDs) are characterized by potentially harmful actions resulting from disturbances in the self-control of emotions and behavior. ICDs include disorders such as gambling, hypersexuality, binge eating, and compulsive buying. ICDs are known non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD) and are associated primarily with the use of dopaminergic treatment (DRT) and especially dopamine agonists (DA). However, in atypical parkinsonism (APS), such as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) or multiple system atrophy (MSA), there are only single case reports of ICDs without attempts to determine the risk factors for their occurrence...

Impulse control disorders (ICDs), a wide spectrum of maladaptive behaviors which includes pathological gambling, hypersexuality and compulsive buying, have been recently suggested to be triggered or aggravated by treatments with dopamine D2/3 receptor agonists, such as pramipexole (PPX). Despite evidence showing that impulsivity is associated with functional alterations in corticostriatal networks, the neural basis of the exacerbation of impulsivity by PPX has not been elucidated. Here we used a hotspot analysis to assess the functional recruitment of several corticostriatal structures by PPX in male rats identified as highly (HI), moderately impulsive (MI) or with low levels of impulsivity (LI) in the 5-choice serial reaction time task (5-CSRTT)...

Homelessness is associated with multiple risk factors for neurocognitive impairment. Past research with people experiencing homelessness has described "frontal lobe" dysfunction including behavioral disorders and executive cognitive impairments. In the current study, 72 adults experiencing homelessness were assessed with a standardized assessment of executive function, and interviewed regarding neurological and psychiatric history. When compared to a control sample of 25 never-homeless participants, and controlling for level of education, there was little evidence for executive dysfunction in the sample of people experiencing homelessness...

BACKGROUND: The change in gambling forms, a wide variety of advertising methods, the access to gambling, as well as the increase in participation in online gambling have made it important to know and investigate gambling, particularly as pathological gambling leads to psychological and physical damage. METHODS: The present study investigated the factor structure of the Gambling Related Cognitions Scale (GRCS) proposed by Raylu and Oei in addiction. The study sample included 574 participants (40...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The ICD-11 chapter on mental, behavioral and neurodevelopmental disorders contains new controversial diagnoses including compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD), intermittent explosive disorder (IED) and gaming disorder. Using a vignette-based methodology, this field study examined the ability of mental health professionals (MHPs) to apply the new ICD-11 diagnostic requirements for impulse control disorders, which include CSBD and IED, and disorders due to addictive behaviors, which include gaming disorder, compared to the previous ICD-10 guidelines...

This article introduces an innovative teaching and learning tool called "Edelman Gamblegrams" that aims to help medical learners better understand disorders related to water/plasma tonicity homeostasis, i.e., hyponatremia and hypernatremia. Gamblegrams, named after physician James L. Gamble, are bar diagrams displaying the relative abundance of extracellular anions and cations and are commonly used in the analysis of acid-base disorders. The Edelman equation represents the physiological variables that determine plasma sodium concentration, namely, total body sodium mass, total body potassium mass, and total body water volume...

In the spectrum of breast neoplasms, approximately 15 to 20% of all diagnosed cases are triple-negative breast carcinoma. TNBC grows and spreads faster than other invasive breast cancers and has a worse prognosis. The existing therapies and chemotherapeutic drugs have several limitations, so the development of safe and affordable treatment options is currently in demand. Hence, this research focuses on scientifically evaluating the therapeutic anticancer effect of ethyl acetate extract of MSG and its combined efficacy with doxorubicin against TNBC...

Decision-making is always coupled with some level of risk, with more pathological forms of risk-taking decisions manifesting as gambling disorders. In macaque monkeys trained in a high risk-high return (HH) versus low risk-low return (LL) choice task, we found that the reversible pharmacological inactivation of ventral Brodmann area 6 (area 6V) impaired the risk dependency of decision-making. Selective optogenetic activation of the mesofrontal pathway from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) to the ventral aspect of 6V resulted in stronger preference for HH, whereas activation of the pathway from the VTA to the dorsal aspect of 6V led to LL preference...

BACKGROUND: Most of the young individuals with problem gambling (PG) or psychotic experiences (PEs) are less prone to seek medical help. Therefore, community-based studies investigating the relationship between these entities in non-clinical young people across a continuum of severity are warranted. To this end, the present study proposes to advance knowledge on the mechanisms that potentially underlie the association between PG and PEs, by examining the role of a potential moderator, i...

Gambling problems have consistently been linked to suicidality, including suicidal ideation, attempts, and suicide. However, the magnitude of the relationship has varied significantly across studies and the potential causal link between gambling problems and suicidality is currently unclear. A meta-analytic literature review was conducted to (a) synthesize pooled prevalence rates of suicidality among individuals with gambling problems; (b) determine if individuals with gambling problems had an increased likelihood of reporting suicidality compared to individuals without gambling problems; and (c) review evidence on causality and directionality...

BACKGROUND: Cariprazine is a third-generation antipsychotic with a unique mechanism of action. It functions as a partial agonist with high affinity for dopamine D2 and D3 and serotonin 5-HT1A receptors, an antagonist for 5-HT2A (moderate affinity) and 5-HT2B (high affinity) receptors. It binds to histamine H1 receptors and has a low affinity for 5-HT2C and alpha 1A-adrenergic receptors and no affinity for muscarinic (cholinergic) receptors. Among the troubling side effects, symptoms related to impulse control, such as hypersexuality, pathological gambling, compulsive shopping, compulsive eating etc...

INTRODUCTION: Impulse control disorder (ICD) is a common non-motor symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD), but its risk factors are still controversial. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of ICD in northern China and analyze the risk factors associated with ICD, multiple ICDs, and four subtypes. METHODS: A total of 285 PD patients were enrolled in this study. Each patient was screened using the Questionnaire for Impulse and Compulsive Control Disorders (QUIP)...

Background and Objectives: Impulse Control Disorders (ICDs) including pathological gambling, hypersexuality, compulsive eating, compulsive buying, and other related behaviors are well-known distinct non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's Disease (PD). Some large-scale studies present a prevalence of at least 10%, however, there are other reports providing much higher rates. The majority of the conducted studies investigating ICDs focus mainly on pharmacological factors, however, from a psychological perspective, there is yet enough room for investigation...