NCRG Monograph Now Available: What Clinicians Need to Know About Gambling Disorders
by: NCRG Staff | Nov 20, 2012
What is a gambling disorder and how can it be treated? To answer those questions, the National Center for Responsible Gaming (NCRG) released the seventh volume of Increasing the Odds: A Series Dedicated to Understanding Gambling Disorder. Because some clinicians may not screen for gambling disorders in their patient assessments, this edition of Increasing the Odds can serve as an essential training guide necessary for any clinician to recognize, understand and treat gambling disorders.
Dr. Howard Shaffer, director of the Division on Addiction at Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate, spoke on the subject of 
Researchers have debated whether or not casino games, such as poker or sports betting, should be considered games of skill or games of chance. What qualifies a game to be labeled a “game of skill” by researchers? This is the subject being examined by 2012 NCRG Outstanding Poster Award Winner Dr. Gerhard Meyer and his colleagues at the University of Bremen in Germany in the poster titled “Is Poker a Game of Skill or Chance? A Quasi-Experimental Study.”
Recovery from addiction can be a fluid process, with successful times and relapses. During her talk at the 13th annual NCRG Conference on Gambling and Addiction, Alexandre Laudet, Ph.D., stated that the science of addiction needs to be complemented with the science of recovery. This will help to increase our understanding of the components, patterns paths and predictors of long-term recovery.
