![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
Abstract
There are a host of complex and interlinked psychological, social and biological factors involved in the development of problem gambling (PG). While existing research, which is predominantly cross-sectional, shows that emerging adulthood is a critical period for PG, the early risk factors for PG are currently unknown. Here, we recruited a sample of 156 early adolescents with no history of PG (mean age 12.6 years) and longitudinally followed them up into late adolescence (mean age 18.9 years) to investigate the role of sex, risk-taking behaviour and changes in temperament and psychiatric symptoms in the evolution of risky gambling behaviour. There were sex-independent effects of temperament and risk-taking behaviour, with greater developmental increases in temperamental frustration (i.e. negative affectivity), greater developmental decreases in temperamental attention (i.e. effortful control) and greater involvement in risky behaviours, such as alcohol use, predicting greater likelihood of being in the risky gambling group. In addition, there were sex-dependent effects whereby higher levels of baseline aggression in females and lower levels of the same in males were more predictive of risky gambling. These findings highlight how sex-dependent and independent factors across the early- to mid-adolescent period influence the occurrence of gambling later in life.
Keywords::
Conflicts of interest
Funding sources: This research was supported by grants from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the Colonial Foundation, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC; Australia; Program Grant 350241) and the Australian Research Council (ARC; Discovery Grant DP0878136). MY is supported by an NHMRC Fellowship Award (ID: 1021973). SW is supported by an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship (ID: 1007716).
Competing interests: No potential conflicts of interest were reported by the authors.
Contstraints on publishing
None.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Murat Yücel
Murat Yücel gained a PhD combined with specialist clinical training in clinical neuropsychology in 2001. He is recognized as an expert in the area of biological psychiatry and addiction neuroscience. His research has influenced thinking across two main themes: (i) determining the long-term impact of heavy cannabis use on brain, cognition and mental health; and (ii) understanding the neural and psychological basis of reduced self-control across as drug and behavioural addictions.
Sarah Whittle
Sarah Whittle is currently a senior research fellow at the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne. Her primary research interests lie in adolescent development, from both a neurobiological and a psychological perspective. She is particularly interested in how environmental factors shape brain development and in turn have consequences for risk and resilience for the development of mood and anxiety disorders.
George J. Youssef
George Youssef is a postdoctoral research fellow at Monash Clinical and Imaging Neuroscience, Monash University. His research is focused on understanding how normative neurodevelopment can predispose adolescents to engage in risk taking behaviours such as substance use and gambling. His work is embedded within a general framework that aims to predict how individual differences in affect regulation can influence an adolescent's ability to direct his or her behaviour towards healthy outcomes.
Himani Kashyap
Himani Kashyap is a clinical neuropsychologist at the Melbourne Clinic, Melbourne, Australia. She has a masters in clinical psychology and a doctorate in neuropsychology, with a junior research fellowship from the University Grants Commission, Government of India. She is interested in an exchange of ideas between research and clinical practice in neuropsychiatric disorders. Her research has focussed on the neuropsychology and phenomenology of obsessive compulsive disorder and impulse control disorders, particularly problem gambling.
Julian G. Simmons
Julian Simmons is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. His research prioritizes the investigation of the mediating role of neurbiological meachnisms in the link between the experience of adversity and psychopathology in children and adolescents, with a particular focus on neuroendocrinology. He graduated in December 2011 and in the past five years has published 35 peer-reviewed papers.
Orli Schwartz
Orli Schwartz is a research fellow and clinical psychologist at the School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia. Since completing her PhD in 2010, she has specialized in the treatment of children, adolescents and families, and investigating family processes in adolescent mental health. Her interests also include adolescent development, emotion regulation skills in adolescence, and the intergenerational transmission of risk for depression. She is currently working on a sleep hygiene intervention to prevent adolescent-onset depressive disorders.
Dan I. Lubman
Dan Lubman has worked across mental health and drug treatment settings in both the UK and Australia. His research is wide-ranging and includes investigating the impact of alcohol and drug use on brain function, the relationship between substance use and mental disorder, as well as the development of targeted intervention programmes within school, primary care, mental health and drug treatment settings. He is regularly contacted for policy advice and community comment, and sits on numerous State and Commonwealth expert reference committees.
Nicholas B. Allen
Nick Allen is the Ann Swindells Professor of clinical psychology at the University of Oregon. His research focuses on clinical depression, especially the relationship between biological and interpersonal aspects of adolescent development and risk for the onset of depression. His recent work focuses on identifying potent, modifiable risk factors for poor mental health during adolescence, and developing and testing preventative interventions that target these risk factors. He has published over 170 scientific papers and 5 books addressing depression during adolescence, as well as developmental aspects of affect, sleep and interpersonal processes.