As DUB may be a modifiable variable, better medical education regarding mental health, more structured medical services, and population-wide psychoeducation might reduce the time between onset and proper management of BD, thus improving outcome.
INTRODUCTION
Gambling Disorder (GD) in older adults is significantly increasing and became an important public health issue in different countries. However, little is known regarding GD in older adults. The prevalence and acceptance of gambling varies among different cultures and this raises the question of how and to what extent culture affects older gamblers. The majority of the important studies regarding GD in older adults have been conducted mainly in Anglo-Saxon cultures and little information is available regarding GD in other cultures. The objective of this paper is to perform the first standardized cross-cultural comparison regarding older adults presenting GD.
METHODS
The total studied sample involved 170 subjects: 89 from the Brazilian (BR) sample and 81 from the American (US) sample. It consisted of 67 men and 103, women (average age = 64.42, standard deviation = ±3,86). They were evaluated for socio-demographics, gambling behavior variables and psychiatric antecedents.
RESULTS
Overall, there were significant differences between BR and US older adults gamblers in marital status, onset of gambling activity, onset of GD and urge scores.
DISCUSSION
This study showed that there are important differences in gambling course, gambling behavior and personal antecedents between two samples of older adults presenting GD from countries with different social-cultural background. It weakens the possibility of generalization of results found in Anglo-Saxon countries to other cultures and reinforces for the need for development of research on GD in older adults outside the Anglo-Saxon culture.
These results suggest that adults with TTM and co-occurring MDD and anxiety disorders exhibit unique clinical differences. The clinical differences may also have treatment implications.
Background and aimsPrevious analyses have highlighted significant associations between gambling disorder (GD)/subsyndromal GD and increased rates of anxiety symptoms and anxiety disorders relative to the general population. However, less is known about how anxiety symptoms influence the clinical presentation of gambling problems. The objective of this study was to evaluate the association between anxiety symptoms, gambling activity, and neurocognition across the spectrum of gambling behavior.MethodsThe sample consisted of 143 non-treatment-seeking young adults (aged 18–29 years), in which 63 individuals (44.1%) were classified as recreational gamblers, 47 (32.9%) as having subsyndromal GD, and 33 (23.1%) met criteria for GD.ResultsThe main findings were: (a) there was a positive correlation between anxiety severity and gambling severity measured by the number of DSM-5 GD criteria met; (b) there was a positive correlation between anxiety severity and attentional impulsiveness; (c) subjects with suicidality presented higher levels of anxiety; and (d) the severity of anxiety symptoms was negatively correlated with the quality of life.Discussion and conclusionsThis study suggests that anxiety may be associated with relevant clinical variables in the broad spectrum of gambling activity. Therefore, proper management of anxiety symptoms might improve the clinical presentation of gamblers in different areas.
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