- January 17, 2025
- Gambling
Dr. Michelle Malkin, Director of the East Carolina University Gambling Research & Policy Initiative joins the show to discuss the significant impact of legalized gambling in the US. From gambling motivated crime to the prevalence of gambling on college campuses, to the surprising impact of gambling on LGBTQ+ communities, Dr. Malkin walks us through a fascinating peek at the impact gambling is having within our communities.
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Transcript:
00;00;00;00 – 00;00;16;27
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It doesn’t matter how much money ended up being taken in one of these acquisitive financial crimes. It literally is about how much money is available to the person who has gone down this path of gambling disorder.
00;00;16;29 – 00;00;51;00
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Welcome to Wager Danger, a podcast about gambling and recovery. I’m your host, Shane Cook, gambling disorder program director at Gateway Foundation. On this episode, Doctor Michelle Malkin shares some incredible research findings from her work at East Carolina University’s Gambling Research and Policy Initiative. Working through her own history with gambling disorder, Doctor Malkin’s research reveals that over half of those seeking help for gambling addiction have committed crimes to fuel their habit, yet must never face arrest.
00;00;51;02 – 00;01;19;05
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And what’s more remarkable, Doctor Malkin’s research indicates that sending them to prison might even make things worse. Michelle also sheds light on the prevalence of gambling on college campuses, surprising findings about gambling in the LGBTQ plus community, and why some communities view the lottery as their financial strategy. That’s a whole lot of ground to cover. So let’s get started.
00;01;19;07 – 00;01;50;28
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Welcome to the show, Doctor Malkin. Thank you so much. Happy to be here. Now, do you mind if I call you Michelle? Yes. That’s fine. Please do. Okay. Most people do, right? Yes. Oh, yeah. Only your friends. I prefer I prefer my first name. Excellent. Well, Michelle, I know your work is is somewhat legendary in in this space and nationally recognized in terms of being out in front of crowds, in front of people talking about problem gambling.
00;01;51;01 – 00;02;18;27
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Give us a little sense for, if you would, if you could just kind of walk us back and give us a sense. How did you get started in this line of work and in this line around problem gambling and gambling addiction? Well, I guess I’ll just have to go way back and say that I am kind of a rarity when it comes to people with a PhD that focuses on gambling research, as I’m an individual with lived experience.
00;02;18;29 – 00;02;59;11
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Both in terms of, being an affected other in the family, but also in terms of my own, kind of journey. And because of that, I was always interested in trying to understand the progression of gambling disorder. And the understanding of gambling related harms. And so even when I was a master’s student, I started to realize that there was so many holes in the understanding of gambling disorder, especially among kind of different communities, for example, students, women, LGBT people of color, you name it, there’s not that much research.
00;02;59;12 – 00;03;23;09
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We do have some research, but most of it has been done kind of on middle aged men overall. And so when I started to look at things like, gambling motivated crime, which was the first area I really got into, there is very little understanding of it and almost no one in the United States looking at it, although there’s people internationally who have.
00;03;23;16 – 00;04;12;09
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And so I wanted to start conducting research, understanding really the progression of gambling related harms as they relate to gambling motivated crime. And that kind of started my career in this, as it turned out, that people were interested in the findings that I had, I was able to go and disseminate that among different communities, publish on it, etc. and then since then I have very much expanded into kind of the overall understanding of gambling behavior and awareness to gambling, risk, as well as the kind of progression of gambling related harms all the way to the suicidal ideation and criminal activity that I see as kind of the end result of all of this kind
00;04;12;09 – 00;04;42;16
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of going together. So I’m looking very broadly, and I do this work, out of kind of literally a passion every day to believe I’m hopefully helping others save lives by giving them the information they need to really reach the person where they’re at. Right. So, that’s a great synopsis, and I appreciate you kind of giving us kind of the, the, the, the high level overview.
00;04;42;19 – 00;05;21;15
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Yeah, sure. So, in terms of, of how this all progressed for you on an individual basis, and how you got started. But, what was your first field of study? Where was your first study? Where did it take you and and where has it taken you since? So I truly, truly believe that my where I’m at right now is a culmination of all the life experiences, education, professional experiences I’ve had historically, without the knowledge that it would lead me to the opportunity to be doing this work.
00;05;21;17 – 00;05;47;21
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So even as a kid, I was somebody who was kind of getting skilled in public speaking through theater. And so the ability to talk with people think on my feet. Things like that kind of came to me. By the time I’m a teenager, then I ended up in, sociology as a major, always interested in how kind of societal impact on different, groups.
00;05;47;24 – 00;06;18;20
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And then I went to law school. And so in law school, I always was focused on kind of advancing civil rights and doing community engagement. I did start to practice law, but that was never my goal. I always wanted to do community based work. And so I actually left the full time practice of law after three years, went into nonprofit work where I built myself up to understanding everything that kind of needs to culminate in running nonprofits and organizing.
00;06;18;23 – 00;06;42;22
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I worked with boards. I became an executive director. I even started my own nonprofit. And so all of those, skills and experiences, then, you know, my my history with gambling led me to losing everything for the first time. And so I had all this knowledge and skills, but I was suffering from my own gambling related harms. And so I had to rebuild my life.
00;06;42;22 – 00;07;09;05
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And so when I did that, I decided to go back to school and start, kind of going towards a career in academia, because I had been able to teach law for several years, at a community college. And I really wanted to know how to teach. Well. And so I actually went back to school. I had two years towards a PhD in higher adult and lifelong education, when all the consequences for my gambling started hitting me, and I kind of lost everything all again.
00;07;09;08 – 00;07;30;28
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I was two years towards my PhD. I was working on my, proposal for my dissertation. I passed all the comps, and then I ended up incarcerated, as a result of my gambling. And I was kicked out of school, and I had to rebuild my life yet again. And so the day I kind of came off my home confinement from that, I went back to the university.
00;07;30;28 – 00;07;55;17
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I went to the Department of Criminal Justice, criminology. I told them my story. It was July. Classes were starting in August. They weren’t looking for more PhD students, but they gave me a chance and allowed me to start in their master’s program. And so I got my master’s and then my PhD. And it was literally when I went back to school, I didn’t think I was going to be doing research on gambling and gambling related harms and everything.
00;07;55;17 – 00;08;16;25
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I really thought it was going to be focused more on women and incarceration and kind of the those types of things, but it ended up being that there was just this hole in knowledge. And so as I progressed in my career, I graduated with my PhD about three and a half years ago. And, so I’m on a tenure track, position at a university.
00;08;16;27 – 00;08;41;17
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I really didn’t think I would ever receive a penny to do gambling related research because there’s no federal funding. There’s very little funding for research generally in the United States. But I have been able to carve out this, ability to do this work. And now, just in the last year, I was able to start a, center over at my university, East Carolina University, for gambling Research and Policy.
00;08;41;19 – 00;08;58;28
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And so I’m doing this work more so than teaching, even though that was what I thought I was going to be doing. And, I get to run a team, work with a whole group of people who care about the outcomes of this. And I get to go kind of what I call the speaking circuit. I get to speak all over the world.
00;08;58;28 – 00;09;28;26
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I’ve had amazing opportunities to hopefully advance knowledge and give practitioners and individuals who need to know it the skills and knowledge to hopefully help people understand gambling, gambling related harms, gambling disorder, gambling motivated crime, suicidal ideation and all the things that kind of come with expanded gambling legality and not anti legality for the fact that my research has actually shown that people gamble whether it’s legal or not.
00;09;28;28 – 00;09;53;26
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Right. So I am not anti legality, I am pro resources and I think those resources need to go to outreach education treatment and research. And so if we need legality to have those resources for the people who are suffering, then I am all for it. But we can’t be continuing to expand gambling without taking care of the people who do go down that path.
00;09;53;29 – 00;10;27;16
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Yeah, makes total sense, and I appreciate that background to that. The, how you got to where you are today. Yeah. So, so let’s talk a little bit about the, the gambling research and policy initiative that East Carolina University, it sounds to me, and from previous discussions you and I have had, it sounds to me that you’ve got several people engaged here working in various, areas of research study.
00;10;27;18 – 00;10;48;04
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What are some of the more interesting areas that people are working on? I’m happy to talk about that. I will say that it is very difficult to find people who are even interested in gambling research. It’s very unfortunate because what happens is people interested in addictions don’t really get the information about gambling. It’s not a huge part of most curriculum.
00;10;48;06 – 00;11;17;09
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And therefore even just finding researchers with a background in understanding gambling or even other behavioral addictions, it just doesn’t really exist. There’s so few. And so I run what I call a very interdisciplinary center. I have people from public health, sociology, criminal justice, social work, psychology, you name it. They can be part of our group. And the idea is to be doing interdisciplinary research to advance knowledge.
00;11;17;09 – 00;11;51;11
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So we focus on okay, so you’ve got you’ve got the entire cauldron there. Of people in the space that are looking at at least would have some sort of touch point. Yeah. Around this. That’s a very interesting group of people to bring together, I think. Well, I, I think when we’re looking at complex issues, we need people who come to those issues from different backgrounds, different theories, so that we can actually talk together and create something that maybe doesn’t exist.
00;11;51;13 – 00;12;19;22
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We are creating a new college student curriculum. And so I’m working with people from education, public health, people in the wellness fields who work with college students who do education. But then we’re bringing the knowledge of gambling and what we believe. College students need in order to be able to understand how to gamble in a healthy way, understand how to recognize the signs that they or somebody they care about is suffering from gambling related harms and what to do about that.
00;12;19;22 – 00;12;41;24
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And then we’re working with universities about all the resources they need to be providing to our college students. And so we’re looking at it in all aspects, not just one. We’re doing the whole picture. And so that’s one example is working on college students. We’re actually also doing a study among emerging adults in general, 18 to 24, not a very well researched group.
00;12;41;24 – 00;13;09;28
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And a lot of the research is focused specifically on college students. So we’re looking more broadly because 75% of emerging adults are not in college, and we don’t know how gambling is impacting them as whether it’s the same or different than college students. And we are also working with, individuals in the LGBTQ community, very under-researched. And so we’ve done some online research, but the most exciting thing we’re doing is actually going to pride events all over the world.
00;13;09;28 – 00;13;31;23
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We’ve been all over the U.S and as well as the UK to to survey people in the LGBTQ community so we can actually know if there’s a higher risk or not, because we know there’s higher risk among drugs and alcohol. We know very little just have totally mixed results among, you know, a handful, two handful, prior research studies.
00;13;31;23 – 00;14;08;15
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And so we’re we’re trying to really advance knowledge in those areas. We’re looking to work within, veteran communities, low scores, racial and ethnic minority communities. The groups that you said, low scores. Oh, sorry. Low socio economic status. So we know that individuals within these kind of low socioeconomic status communities are more likely to engage in lottery play for the goal of actually improving life, which is very different than people in their middle class who engage in lottery more for recreation.
00;14;08;20 – 00;14;35;21
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So we’re kind of trying to understand those differences and see, kind of what kinds of different kinds of resources or messages need to be going into different communities, not treating every community as the same. Right. And, and I assume that the work here is fairly early, so there’s really no results from it. It’s just you understand that these are areas where, we need to do.
00;14;35;23 – 00;15;08;27
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Really? Yeah. We’ve actually conducted and completed a couple surveys. Oh, right. Okay. We’ve been we just got recently published on understanding the, the behavior of, gambling among, individuals in the LGBTQ community. We have one study out on that. And what we found is that especially among trans and non-binary individuals in the community, they’re more likely to gamble and have risk associated with the gender assigned at birth versus their gender identity now.
00;15;09;02 – 00;15;35;26
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So that was really helpful because nobody would have known those results because it’s the first study of its kind. I just had published something that talked about it’s kind of more about the affected others. But what we found is that, women were less likely to be problem gamblers if their spouses were, but men were more likely to be problem gamblers if their spouses were also problem gamblers, or they were worried about the gambling of the other person.
00;15;36;03 – 00;16;13;05
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So that was a study that was recently published. We I also just published a study on, understanding some of how general strain theory, which is a theory within criminal justice, can help explain kind of the progression of gambling to problem gambling. So we do have some stuff done, but we did a study across 12 campuses in the North Carolina system, and we were able to do a baseline assessment prior to the advancement of legalization of sports wagering to understand what kind of gambling behavior and risk already existed.
00;16;13;05 – 00;16;40;15
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And we found that about 13% of males in the Unk system, undergraduate males, were already suffering from at least one gambling related harm prior to the event, the expanded legalization. And that, matched what we kind of found in the we did a study in another state, in Michigan, where we found we did both pre and post, legalization among college students, and we found very similar results in the pre.
00;16;40;17 – 00;17;10;05
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But when it came to the post, students were where there’s a much higher prevalence of gambling and gaming. But the disorder the risk didn’t go up. And part of that is because we believe there’s a period of time between when people start gambling till they start to suffer enough gambling related harms may cross over to gambling disorder. And so college students are still at those early stages, so they’re suffering maybe from 1 or 2 gambling related harms, but they’re not yet at the four plus mark.
00;17;10;08 – 00;17;36;18
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So okay, we’re, we’re we’re doing a lot and we’re actually moving into the publication stage in quite a few studies. Wow. That’s amazing that you’re able to move that quickly considering the policy initiative itself as has been there has been live now for what, just half a half a year or six? Well, we officially started going really at the beginning of 2024.
00;17;36;19 – 00;17;55;20
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Okay. But we didn’t have a staff. It was myself and a colleague who was working with me, I who does a lot of my statistics and stuff so that I don’t have to, you know, be spending too much time doing the analysis. I’m overseeing the projects I’m creating, those, the questions I’m creating, the surveys. I’m going out there and collecting data.
00;17;55;22 – 00;18;12;14
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But I had to hire an admin assistant. I had to hire, you know, a project manager. I’m I’m working on getting a, postdoc. You know, those are the kind of administrative things that I’ve been doing over the last year. But while we’re doing that, we’ve been able to secure funds. So we’re going forward with a number of studies.
00;18;12;14 – 00;18;34;04
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We probably have about 20 different studies. Honestly, going right now, which is probably more than I should ever have, but it’s really hard to say no when we know that this knowledge is needed. And I think that’s part of the thing of coming from a lived experience background is like, I get really excited about the opportunities to do this work.
00;18;34;06 – 00;18;59;03
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And I also know how few people in the United States are even knowledgeable enough in gambling to be doing it. So I feel big, like responsibility to work every day to try to make a difference in this field. Yeah, well very impressive. Hats off to you. Thank you. And I wish you all nothing but continued success, with the Institute.
00;18;59;03 – 00;19;29;14
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And I have no doubt that you will. Let’s go back to something that you talked about earlier and one of the areas that you personally, have an interest in exploring. And I want you to help me expand my understanding and, knowledge in this space, but it’s it’s around gambling motivated crime. Which which you’ve done a lot of personal research on, if I understand correctly.
00;19;29;16 – 00;20;12;08
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And, just just share with me kind of what all was involved in that research for you, what you learned from that, and, and what we should begin to think about or what others should begin to think about as it relates to gambling, motivated crime and everything surrounding that. So one of the big outcomes for people who end up going into severe gambling disorder and continuing down that kind of wormhole, is that we know over 50% of those seeking help, at least from traditional ways, will admit to committing at least one gambling motivated crime.
00;20;12;11 – 00;20;42;14
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And what the way I define gambling motivated crime, although it’s not the only type of gambling motivated crime, which I will explain, is people who have, exhausted their legally available funds and they either are in such debt that they need to somehow figure out a way out of it, or they just need to keep gambling because their urges are too much.
00;20;42;14 – 00;21;11;11
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And yet there’s this faulty thinking, I kind of call it the gambler’s fallacy, where what happens is with the progression of gambling, we suffer from a number of gambling related harms social, economic fact. Criminal, you name it, we can suffer from it. But we think that the only way out of it is to keep gambling, because the next big win is not only going to fix the debt, it’s going to fix the relationships we’ve broken.
00;21;11;17 – 00;21;28;09
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It’s going to put the money back that we borrowed things like that. Well, what happens is a lot of people, especially in their first time when they commit one of these crimes, they consider it borrowing. They’re not expecting to keep the money. They want to put it back. But there are people who are in these trust relationships.
00;21;28;09 – 00;21;52;27
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So you’re talking about spouses, parents, employees who have access to funds because of that trust relationship. And they use it for gambling. They’re not using it to buy a big house or Rolex watch. They’re taking money, sometimes tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands and so many. It actually goes into the millions because of this gambler’s fallacy.
00;21;52;27 – 00;22;20;10
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And what I like to say is, it doesn’t matter how much money ended up being taken in one of these acquisitive financial crimes, it literally is about how much money is available to the person who has gone down this path of of gambling disorder. And so what happens is the individual, their their likelihood for suicide increases substantially once they’ve committed these crimes, because they’re not necessarily people who would ever commit a crime except for when they gamble.
00;22;20;16 – 00;22;46;00
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And so they’re there’s so much shame and guilt, and at some point they just run out of avenues. They get caught, but many don’t. So what I’ve found in my research is, although over 50% admit to committing one of these crimes, only 14% are arrested. And then it’s kind of, a split between whether they end up being found guilty of a felony or misdemeanor.
00;22;46;03 – 00;23;10;01
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About 7% will end up being incarcerated for it. But most people who actually commit these crimes are just living with that shame and guilt and never face the criminal consequences, or they’re dealing with it, but they’re dealing with it privately. A family member who doesn’t want to press charges, but the person is trying to pay it back, or they’ve broken that relationship for good.
00;23;10;03 – 00;23;33;13
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So there’s all these different like, issues that come about with these kinds of crimes. And so what we do know, though, is that for those that do get arrested, prison is the last place they need to be because prisons are not set up to deal with people with gambling disorder. What we know is the highest percentage of people with gambling disorder or facing gambling harms are in prison.
00;23;33;20 – 00;23;56;23
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And in fact, about 20% of people entering prison already have an issue with gambling and 30% leaving because there’s so much gambling happening in the prisons and those that had other addictions. Gambling is way more available but is impacting the brain, giving highs and lows and everything like that, like other addictions. That’s why gambling is an addiction. It affects the brain just like substances does.
00;23;56;26 – 00;24;20;20
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So gambling is rampant and there’s almost no treatment. And so we have more people leaving prison with gambling disorders and almost no treatment for those who are entering with it. And so what we need to do is diversion court, kind of like what we see with drug courts and and DUI courts, etc. you get you help the person through the addiction and the crime goes away.
00;24;20;23 – 00;24;46;24
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But also by keeping people out of prison work, allowing them to keep working and pay back restitution and try to get their lives back, but also fix the relationship or at least, pay back. If somebody ends up with a with a criminal background, the chances that they’ll ever be able to pay back whatever money they took has gone down substantially, because they don’t have the ability to necessarily to get a good paying job in the future.
00;24;46;27 – 00;25;13;29
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And so there’s just a lot of work. And one of the big things I’ve done is create a checklist for lawyers, for judges, for others interested to understand what is and what is not this kind of acquisitive, gambling related harm, crime. I mean, that could potentially use diversion over incarceration. And so I created a checklist that is, you know, available for anybody to use.
00;25;14;01 – 00;25;34;15
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Then I did say there are other kinds of crimes. I constantly, every day I receive any news of anything related to gambling and crime. And there’s other kinds of crimes. I mean, we have organized crime and we have people who commit crimes in and around casinos. Those are nothing to do with addiction. But we also know that there are more violent crimes and types of crimes that are related to the addiction.
00;25;34;15 – 00;26;01;22
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People who leave their kids in the car and go to the casino, individuals who, you know, actually commit a violent crime, you know, it might be, you know, going to a bank and robbing it or, doing something that’s much more, violent than, the typical acquisitive crime. And I am 100% not saying these individuals don’t need treatment, but it’s kind of different than the acquisitive crime.
00;26;01;22 – 00;26;23;15
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So we need to set up also within our criminal justice system, opportunities for treatment overall for anybody who is suffering from gambling because those people would never have left their kids in the car or done anything like that if it wasn’t for the gambling. Sure. And so we just have a lot of work to do. This field. I feel very privileged to be able to be one of the few people working in it.
00;26;23;15 – 00;26;48;10
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Are there communities that you’re working with or, areas across the country that you’re working with to implement programs like this? Well, we do have an existing gambling diversion treatment diversion court in Clark County, Nevada. And so I did an evaluation of that. And I also worked very hard to create some like considerations for any jurisdiction who’s trying to set up these kinds of programs.
00;26;48;13 – 00;27;12;18
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The state of new Jersey, the state of Washington, Ohio. There are a number of other states statewide, as well as counties and smaller jurisdictions that are putting together programs or are trying to pass programs legislatively to do work in this. And almost all of them kind of defined the gambling mode of a crime, as I had talked about it in terms of the acquisitive type of crimes.
00;27;12;20 – 00;27;38;19
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These are vastly the majority of crimes committed related to gambling disorder. Other kinds of crimes are much less likely. Less than 3% are violent, Wendy, 7% are acquisitive. So just trying to work with people, you know, and get them the help they need, but also help them do the right thing by the people that they hurt is, is, you know, really important?
00;27;38;24 – 00;28;05;07
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Sure. Yeah. And what kind of, results are they seeing as part of implementing this program? To create diversion and, that for, gambling related crime there, there hasn’t been a huge number of individuals who have gone through the program yet in Clark County. But what we do know is a huge reduction in recidivism in general.
00;28;05;07 – 00;28;30;21
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People who do time in prison, 70% are likely to receive a date and end up back in prison. When it comes to this, we’re at under 30%. Have had any kind of issue that might have led to an additional incarceration, but the vast majority of people who have gone through it are in recovery long term. They’re actually becoming mentors to the newer people in the court.
00;28;30;24 – 00;28;53;26
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They’re paying back restitution not only while they’re in the program for three years, but they’re paying back restitution to a civil judgment beyond that. So if they still owe money after the three years, they’re still paying on a monthly or quarterly basis, so that they always have that reminder of where gambling brought them. But they’re living happy, successful lives, being in recovery.
00;28;53;29 – 00;29;20;22
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And that is, you know, great. If for some reason, it wasn’t working, we wouldn’t see that people would be going back and gambling. We know that gambling treatment in general has a very low success rate overall. People relapse all the time. So we’re seeing really good results from the diversion court and this intensive scrutiny and supervision over a three year period.
00;29;20;24 – 00;29;49;16
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It’s working. But there’s a lot of considerations. You have to have community buy in. You have to figure out how to calculate the restitution that makes it so that it’s enough, but not so much that the person can’t actually do it. You have to like, there’s all these kind of little things. That is what I do my training on around this so that jurisdictions kind of can try not to make some of the same mistakes stakes other places have, but also to consider these things as they move forward with their programs.
00;29;49;18 – 00;30;25;16
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Excellent. It’s good to hear that, there is some success that’s being had there, in this particular area. Tell me a little bit more about and we touched on this marginalized communities and underserved communities in general, when it comes to to gambling. Let’s go a little bit deeper. I’m not sure we know from other addiction research outside of gambling that there are different risk, profiles for different identities based on things.
00;30;25;16 – 00;30;52;26
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What I, I tend to use the theory of minority stress theory, which tends to say that the more kind of microaggressions, real aggressions, racism, homophobia, whatever it is that people face and also traumas in their life is more likely to lead to kind of negative outcomes. And of those negative outcomes can be addictive behaviors. But what we don’t know is whether gambling is one of those.
00;30;52;26 – 00;31;27;22
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If you and we also don’t know what kinds of gambling different communities and identities do, so in general, most people the number one form of gambling in most communities, etc. is lottery. But the use of lottery can change based on communities. But we also know that certain communities are an example of that. But what you mean by that, a good example is kind of what I had said earlier, which is people in low SES will actually, oh, sorry, socio economic status.
00;31;27;22 – 00;31;51;14
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Communities will use the lottery as a chance to actually improve their livelihood. Okay. People from a higher economic bracket will use the lottery as more of a recreational activity, and it doesn’t actually matter to them whether they win or lose because they have the money. And so it’s about the kind of amount of money that somebody gambles.
00;31;51;14 – 00;32;19;10
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Doesn’t matter. What matters is how much of that is actually disposable income. Okay. So I was a recent, individual I was with was talking about how they grew up in a very low socio economic status household. And when mom won, they got gifts and they had great food. And when mom lost, they suffered. And they didn’t have the money to pay for the electricity.
00;32;19;13 – 00;32;52;05
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And they lived like this week to week, month to month for years. And so gambling was a huge part of the impact on that family. And we could see that happen in other kinds of situations. But when you’re living at the poverty line, a win or loss can make a huge difference for that family. Whereas if you’re if you’re, somebody who has a lot of money, it all depends on how long it takes for you to deplete that money, for you to have those kinds of consequences.
00;32;52;05 – 00;33;17;05
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Right. But what I will say is what we have found is it doesn’t matter where somebody comes from originally. Once they have gambling kind of gambling disorder, once they have the addiction, the consequences look almost is essentially the same loss of home, loss of car, loss of a spouse. We literally have seen homelessness and it doesn’t even matter on gender.
00;33;17;05 – 00;33;36;15
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I do a lot of work on gender. And when it comes to what we know criminal, logically, women are much less likely to commit a crime. But when it comes to people with gambling disorder, it’s exactly the same. Whether you’re a man or a woman, same percentage will commit a crime, and essentially based on gender, it does not matter.
00;33;36;17 – 00;33;57;24
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They all are suffering from a similar number of gambling related harms. And so we know that the gambling disorder takes people there essentially the same. But how they get there based on their backgrounds might be different. How long they progress it takes them to progress to gambling disorder may be different, but we don’t have that research yet. So that’s what we’re doing.
00;33;57;28 – 00;34;24;07
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We’re actually asking people, when did you start gamble? When did you first think that you started to have a problem? We’re looking at what that progression is. When did you first seek help? What are all the ways you sought help? And let’s stop looking only at the traditional GAA and and go into therapy because people in some communities, for example, African American communities, it might be a pastor, it may be some other trusted space.
00;34;24;14 – 00;34;49;14
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And what we found is sure, a lot of people are using those traditional spaces, but over 25% of our people in our study around help seeking found that friends and family were where they sought their help. So they’re seeking help. Still. But we don’t have any understanding on the success when they’re using friends and family, or when they’re using their pastors, or when they’re calling the hotline rather than actually seeing it.
00;34;49;17 – 00;35;17;20
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So we’re looking at all these different kinds of help seeking and looking at it based on demographics and backgrounds as well. Okay, great. Great. So as you look forward and you look towards yeah, the next decade here, with the with the institute and where you, where you envision that being, take us from where you are today to where you are ten years from now.
00;35;17;23 – 00;35;39;24
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Well, right now I can project that out. So the fact that you’re calling an institute is one of the goals right now. We’re an initiative. We hope to become a UMC Institute. That is not just based on kind of soft dollars, but that we have maybe some actual legislative funding that underwrites this so that we know we’re going to be able to exist long into the future.
00;35;39;26 – 00;36;14;02
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So that’s one of the goals. But really, I just want to be able to keep doing the work that needs to be done. There are some amazing researchers doing gambling related work in the United States and internationally, and I just want to be helping in that field in any way that I can. And I hope to kind of work with students and postdocs and others that don’t know to work on gambling and inspire them to go into this field and to care about this issue, because there’s just not enough.
00;36;14;02 – 00;36;39;25
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And that’s I can’t believe how hard it is to find people who are like, yeah, I get it. I don’t mind educating people on it, but you have to have people who really care about the issue to be able to understand why we do this work, but really, I mean, I’ll take people who know nothing about gambling if they’re really good at, you know, statistics and coding, you know, qualitative work and whatever.
00;36;39;27 – 00;37;04;21
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But for me, over the next ten years, you know, no matter what work I’m doing, no matter where I’m at, anything like that, I just hope to know that I am making a difference and that I am disseminating the information I’m learning as fast as possible to the people who need it most. As an academic, we’re told, you know, publish or perish, it’s all about publishing and I publish.
00;37;04;23 – 00;37;38;02
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I have a lot of manuscripts that I’m working on, manuscripts that are under consideration and stuff like that, and that’s important. But even while I’m doing that, it’s about being out there at the conferences, at the anywhere I allow it to be and saying, here’s some information you may not know yet, or here’s a way to work within this community that, you know, you might just need a little cultural humility on and let’s make a difference, because I want to tackle that suicidal ideation of individuals.
00;37;38;02 – 00;38;20;11
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I want to save those lives. And if we could save a life, that’s everything. So I’m trying to save lives. Yeah. Great comment. Great work that you’re doing. Michel. I appreciate, appreciate this conversation. One last thing I’m going to I’m going to ask is, as you look at not only the great work that you’re doing and your team is doing, but there are others across, across the US, that have some interesting, research at play as you look out across some of your colleagues doing similar work.
00;38;20;13 – 00;38;43;22
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What are some of the things that stand out for you as, as areas of study that are really interesting? So and so I was doing some really great work, this opportunity to give a shout out to some colleagues, I’ll tell you that I’m a new face in this, and I see all my colleagues as mentors.
00;38;43;25 – 00;39;24;28
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I always want to work collaboratively, not competitively. If there’s something that I can add, that’s great, but I am truly inspired by the work of. I’ll give you some examples. You know, the Rutgers Gambling Center, the work under Leo and everything like that. Leon hours. Amazing. Rachel Verburg has been doing amazing prevalence studies for almost three decades, I think, and, you know, we wouldn’t be where we are understanding this without the work, of doctors now and and Philbert, you then look at kind of the work that’s happening in New Mexico by Josh Grubbs.
00;39;25;00 – 00;39;57;09
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Amazing work. He’s gotten some really amazing findings about, you know, the use of alcohol and, and binge, drinking among those people who are sports wagers. And then, you know, we can’t leave out the work of the UCLA group who, kind of really advance the understanding of treatment. But not only the researchers, but I want to say that, you know, one of the most important people we can talk about are the people who are doing treatment.
00;39;57;11 – 00;40;29;12
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And so, you know, I always and admiring the work of Jodi back told and the leadership that she’s providing in, in ensuring people get certified and trained and kind of the selfless work she does, honestly, of constantly just being available to almost anybody to understand the training that is needed. As somebody who works in the social sciences interdisciplinary, I really want to leave the treatment piece to the people who are experts in that.
00;40;29;14 – 00;41;02;03
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I use the studies that they have. I use the the criteria that they’ve created to help understand how to diagnose and things like that. I’m trying to understand more the behavior, the timing, the the risk, the the harms, because we need to understand to be able to actually, you know, maybe intervene in a way that works early. Is it education that we need to be doing more or is it more outreach and screening?
00;41;02;08 – 00;41;25;04
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How do we stop people from actually ending up there? Somebody suffering from the first gambling related harm does not mean they will ever have gambling disorder. So what do we do? What do we provide during the time between the time that they’re starting to gamble more than they can afford to, you know, the diagnose source of gambling disorder, how can we best be serving them?
00;41;25;06 – 00;41;50;24
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And those are the kind of answers I’m trying to do. But I’ll tell you, there are amazing people around this country also trying to answer some of those questions. Yeah. For sure. Some great names you mentioned there, some friends of ours. And, look, look forward to a continued collaboration between all of us. Yeah, to get the word out and get the message out for people to hear.
00;41;50;26 – 00;42;13;28
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It sounds great. Yeah. I appreciate you joining us on the show today. It’s been a fantastic conversation. Hope you enjoyed it as well. I did. Yeah. We look forward to, perhaps a, a follow up sometime down the road. That would be great. I’d be happy to follow up any time you need. Excellent. All right. Thanks, Michel.
00;42;14;01 – 00;42;41;17
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Thank you so much. Take care. Bye. We love hearing from you. So please take a moment to like, share and comment on our podcast. You can reach out to us directly via email at Wager Danger at Gateway foundation.org. Look for us on Facebook and Twitter at Recover Gateway on LinkedIn at gateway Dash Foundation, or through our website at Gateway foundation.org.
00;42;41;20 – 00;43;07;23
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Wager danger is supported through funding, in whole or in part through a grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Division of Substance to Use Prevention and Recovery. And remember, recovery is a lifelong process. If you are a family member is struggling with a gambling problem. Call gateway at (844) 975-3663 and speak with one of our counselors for a confidential assessment.
