Problem Gambling and Intimate Partner Violence

Lorne M. Korman, Jane Collins, Don Dutton, Bramilee Dhayananthan, Nina Littman-Sharp, Wayne Skinner

This study examined the prevalence and severity of intimate partner violence (IPV) among 248 problem gamblers (43 women, 205 men) recruited from newspaper advertisements. The main outcome measures used were the Canadian Problem Gambling Index, the Conflicts Tactics Scale-2, the State Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2, the drug and alcohol section of the Addiction Severity Index and the substance use section of the Structured Clinical Interview for the DSM-IV. In this sample, 62.9% of participants reported perpetrating and/or being the victims of IPV in the past year, with 25.4% reporting perpetrating severe IPV. The majority of the sample (64.5%) also had clinically significant anger problems, which was associated with an increased risk of being both the perpetrator and victim of IPV. The presence of a lifetime substance use disorder among participants who had clinically significant anger problems further increased the likelihood of both IPV perpetration and victimization. These findings underscore the importance of routinely screening gambling clients for anger and IPV, and the need to develop public policy, prevention and treatment programs to address IPV among problem gamblers. Future research to examine IPV among problem gamblers is recommended.