A study on college gambling will be released later this year by the National Center for Responsible Gambling. Christine Reilly, the executive director of the Institute for Research on Pathological Gambling and Related Disorders, says the study is looking at three areas.
Reilly says they are looking at the prohibitions the colleges have on gambling in general. They are also looking at recovery as she says it is a "missed opportunity" when schools look at gambling just as a regulation that you break. She says student health organizations need to be educated that problem gambling can be a disorder and that people who gamble excessively can be treated as someone who has a mental health problem.
The third issue looks at gambling that is allowed on campus. Reilly says it’s an interesting issue as a lot of campuses have a lot of gambling that’s for charity, such as poker tournaments. "And I think we need to think through is that is being inconsistent if you prohibit gambling, but you allow those," Reilly says.
Reilly says they use the scientific approach to ensure the studies are not influenced by outside forces. Reilly says the money is given to the nonprofit N.C.R.G., which in turn gives it to the institute, and the research is not released to the N.C.R.G. before it is published.
Reilly says if things were tainted they would not be able to have so many publications in peer review journals, as those journals would be able to tell if the research was skewed. Reilly was in Iowa recently to talk with state gambling regulators. For more on the college gambling study, visit the N.C.R.G’s website .
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