Arnt Schellekens (Department of Psychiatry) and Femke Atsma (Department of IQ Health), together with partners in addiction care, have received a €3.5 million ZonMw grant to establish a new research consortium focused on gambling addiction.
Since the opening of the Dutch online gambling market in 2021, both the number of people engaging in gambling and the demand for help with gambling-related problems have increased substantially. The consortium aims to improve the diagnosis and treatment of gambling addiction in the Netherlands. The research will investigate the care needs of people experiencing gambling-related problems, how treatments can be better tailored to their needs, and how treatment dropout can be reduced. The programme consists of four interconnected work packages. The first explores the experiences of people with gambling-related problems, both within and outside addiction care services. The second examines which treatments are currently being offered and evaluates their outcomes. The third focuses on developing a national cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) treatment protocol and investigates whether reward-based interventions can improve treatment effectiveness. Finally, the fourth work package evaluates two promising pharmacological treatment options,