Gambling Disorder and Childhood Trauma: A Complex Association
- PDF / 644,863 Bytes
- 14 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 52 Downloads / 183 Views
Gambling Disorder and Childhood Trauma: A Complex Association Natascha S. Horak1,2 · Gillian Eagle2 · Dan J. Stein1,3 · Christine Lochner1 Accepted: 22 September 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Gambling disorder (GD) is classified as a behavioural addiction and has some phenotypic similarities with substance use disorders (SUDs). Childhood adversity and life stressors are associated with increased risk for SUDs in adulthood. However, there is limited research investigating the association between childhood trauma, stressors and behavioural addictions such as GD. In this case–control cross-sectional study, 31 adult patients with GD were compared to 31 matched healthy controls (HCs) in terms of exposure to early adversity using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ-SF). In addition, past 12-month stressful life event exposure was assessed using the Life Event Stress Scale (LESS) and investigated as a possible moderator of the relationship between childhood trauma and GD by means of a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Logistic regression analyses were used to test if childhood trauma (CTQ-SF) and its subtypes were significant predictors of a diagnosis of GD. Severity of childhood trauma in general, and on all five subtypes, was significantly higher in GD patients compared to HCs. Childhood trauma was a significant predictor of a diagnosis of GD, with physical neglect being the single trauma subtype to significantly increase odds of GD in adulthood. Stressful life events moderated the relationship between childhood trauma and GD, i.e. childhood trauma was significantly higher in GD patients compared to HCs when LESS was low. The findings support a link between childhood trauma and GD, with current stress as a moderating variable, and may be useful for future individualized therapeutic strategies. Keywords Gambling disorder · Behavioural addictions · Childhood trauma · Life events · Stress
* Christine Lochner [email protected] 1
SA MRC Unit on Risk and Resilience in Mental Disorders, Department of Psychiatry, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa
2
Department of Psychology, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
3
Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Gambling Studies
Introduction Gambling disorder (GD) is a behavioural addiction that has received increased attention in research in recent years. This condition has been categorized as one of the substancerelated and other addictive disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Version 5 (DSM-5) (American Psychiatric Association 2013a) due to similarities in public health implications, and genetic and phenotypic features (American Psychiatric Association 2013b; Stein et al. 2018). An increased rate of childhood trauma has been found in substance-abusing populations (for a review, see Edalati and Krank 2016), including in South Africa (Jewkes et al. 2010)
Data Loading...
