Etiology is the study of causal pathways. Because of the complex analyses and study designs that must be used, this type of research represents the crown jewel of health research. The outcomes of such research often lead to successful treatments and preventive interventions. The process of discovering causal associations and pathways to understand how different factors, exposures, or disease-ca...

Pathological gambling is a disabling disorder experienced by about 1% of adults. We randomised 233 participants (41.6% women) 1:1:1 to nalmefene (20 or 40 mg) or placebo. In analyses performed using an intention-to-treat (ITT) population, nalmefene failed to show statistically significant differences from placebo on primary and secondary outcomes. Post hoc analyses of only participants who rece...

AIMS Recommendations related to pathological gambling for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and statistic manual for mental disorders (DSM) are to eliminate the criterion related to committing illegal acts and reduce the threshold for diagnosis from five to four criteria. This study evaluated the impact of these changes on prevalence rates and classification accuracy. DESIGN Data were analy...

Pathological gamblers (PGs) present with various forms of psychopathology, maladaptive personality traits, and gambling motivations. Some suggest that this variability supports classification of PGs into distinct subtypes. Subtyping models are thought to have implications for understanding pathological gambling (PG) etiology and treatment outcomes. This review evaluates the existing literature ...

We study individual decision making in a lottery-choice task performed by three different populations: gamblers under psychological treatment ("addicts"), gamblers’ spouses ("victims"), and people who are neither gamblers or gamblers’ spouses ("normals"). We find that addicts are willing to take less risk than normals, but the difference is smaller as a gambler’s time under treatment increases....

OBJECTIVE The main objective was to determine the prediction level of alexithymia and difficulties in emotion regulation on pathological gambling. Secondly, this study aimed to examine the mediating role of difficulties in emotion regulation on the relationship between alexithymia and pathological gambling. METHOD The sample was consisted of 246 male gamblers. The average age was 33.30 with a...

Approximately one third of problem gamblers in Finland suffer from pathological gambling. An essential factor affecting the genesis of pathological gambling is a dysfunction of the dopaminergic reward system. It may be associated with the pleasure arising from gambling along with the reward and expectance of reward. In Parkinsons's disease patients receiving dopaminergic medication, pathologica...