Gambling and military Service: Characteristics, comorbidity, and problem severity in an epidemiological sample.

Gambling and military Service: Characteristics, comorbidity, and problem severity in an epidemiological sample. Addict Behav. 2020 Nov 06;:106725 Authors: van der Maas M, Nower L Abstract Active military members and veterans both show elevated risk of Gambling Disorder. However, research comparing these groups to civilians in epidemiological samples is sparse. There is also some research suggesting that there is a stronger association between military service and poor mental outcomes for women. The current study applies bivariate analyses and generalized linear modelling predicting Problem Gambling Severity Index scores to a representative, complex survey sample of 2176 New Jersey adult residents. The results show that problem gambling scores for past and current military service members were more than double that of the civilian participants after controlling for relevant demographic and behavioral characteristics. Additionally, the relationship between problem gambling scores and military service was significantly stronger for women than men. Bivariate analyses indicated that active military service members scored higher on the Problem Gambling Severity Index, indicated greater weekly participation in online gambling, lottery, electronic gambling machine, and sports betting, and nearly 20 times the rate of suicidal ideation compared with civilians. Additional regression analysis show that among military service members problem gamb...
Source: Addictive Behaviors - Category: Addiction Authors: Tags: Addict Behav Source Type: research