Telescoping Phenomenon in Pathological Gambling:... : The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (original) (raw)

Brief Reports

Association With Gender and Comorbidities

Grant, Jon E. JD, MD, MPH*; Odlaug, Brian L. MPH*†; Mooney, Marc E. PhD‡

*Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Chicago, IL; †Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; and ‡Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Send reprint requests to Jon E. Grant, JD, MD, MPH, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Chicago, South Maryland Ave, Chicago, IL 60637. E-mail: [email protected].

Abstract

The course of pathological gambling (PG) in women has been described as having a later age of initiation but a shorter time to problematic gambling (“telescoped”). This study examined evidence for telescoping and its relationship with comorbidities. Seventy-one treatment-seeking individuals with PG underwent a diagnostic interview to examine gambling behaviors, age at initiation of gambling, and time from initiation to meeting criteria for PG. The women had a higher mean age at gambling initiation compared with that of the men (mean [SD] age, 31.3 [13.0] years, compared with 22.4 [7.9] years; p = 0.0003) and a significantly shorter time from initiation of gambling to meeting the criteria for PG (8.33 [8.7] years compared with 11.97 [9.1] years; p = 0.0476) after controlling for demographic and clinical variables. This study presents evidence for a gender-specific course of PG unrelated to psychiatric comorbidities and suggests a need for greater clinical focus on the gender differences of gambling behavior.