Elsevier

Schizophrenia Research

Volume 192, February 2018, Pages 463-464
Schizophrenia Research

Letter to the Editor
Disordered gambling and psychosis: Prevalence and clinical correlates

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2017.04.006Get rights and content

Introduction

A paucity of research has examined the relationship between psychosis and disordered gambling. Individuals with both psychosis and disordered gambling may represent a uniquely vulnerable clinical population given important commonalities in underlying brain pathology and clinical symptomatology that occur across both disorders (e.g., Potenza and Chambers, 2001), which may manifest in increased risk of poly-comorbidity and symptom severity among this dual disorder population. To our knowledge, only one study has examined rates of psychosis among disordered gamblers, which were found to be 3.5 times higher than non-gamblers (Cunningham-Williams et al., 1998), and no studies have examined the demographic and clinical correlates in a sample of disordered gamblers with and without psychosis.

We addressed this empirical gap by examining the co-occurrence of psychosis and disordered gambling in a sample of treatment-seeking disordered gamblers to identify the rates and demographic and clinical correlates. We hypothesized that rates of psychosis would be higher in the population of disordered gamblers compared to the general population and that the dual diagnosis would be associated with greater severity of gambling-related problems and elevated rates of other psychiatric comorbidities.

Section snippets

Methods

Participants (N = 349) were treatment-seeking disordered gamblers recruited from the Gambling Outpatient Unit of the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of Sao Paulo Hospital between the years 2006 and 2015. Research participation was voluntary and patients were informed at the outset that treatment was not contingent upon research participation.1

Results

Approximately 7.2% (n = 25) of the sample met criteria for psychosis. Disordered gamblers with psychosis were significantly more likely to be female (64.0% vs. 39.7%) and have significantly fewer years of education (M = 9.6 vs. 11.3 years) compared to disordered gamblers without psychosis.

Disordered gamblers with psychosis reported spending significantly more hours gambling per week (M = 10.38 vs. 8.06), greater gambling symptoms (M = 30.89 vs. 25.72 score on the GSAS), and more days where they

Discussion

The rate of psychosis in our sample of disordered gamblers (7.2%) is approximately 3.8 times the rate of psychosis found in the local general population (Andrade et al., 2002) and in line with the rate reported by Cunningham-Williams et al. (1998). The fact that elevated rates of psychosis were found in disordered gamblers is a relatively new finding, though not necessarily unexpected given the commonalities in brain pathology and associated behaviors between the two disorders, such as

Contributors

B.C., H.K., and H.T. conceptualized the study. H.T. managed the data curation. B.C. completed the statistical analyses and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. H.K., D.H., L.T-M., and D.M. edited the manuscript and finalized the statistical analyses. All authors have contributed to and have approved the final manuscript.

Conflict of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest with this work.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Emma V. Ritchie and Ana Yaemi for their help with data preparation.

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