Research now under way at the Community Health Research Unit in the University of Ottawa's School of Nursing might someday yield a more effective means of treating problem gamblers.
Bonnie Lee, a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Nursing, within the Faculty of Health Sciences, is building on a model of family therapy she developed through her doctoral studies at the University of Ottawa's Department of Classics and Religious Studies. Lee incorporates strategies in the so-called Congruence Model to improve communications and relationships between gamblers and their spouses. She is also a research fellow with the Institute of Population Health.
“The family really is the primary context for any person and the family or one's spouse is the greatest ally in a person's recovery from illness and from addictions,” says Lee. “The model I am building helps people make reconnections with themselves and with their partners through communication and acknowledgement.This gives them access to resources so they can deal with stress and distress in a more constructive way.”
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She is currently in the second phase of her research involving gambling addiction in a postdoctoral fellowship, funded by Nancy Edwards who holds the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation/Canadian Institutes of Health Research Nursing Chair at the University.
A registered Ontario marriage and family therapist, Lee brings a unique background into her research on the treatment of problem gambling. She holds a master’s degree in speech pathology from the University of Virginia and a master’s in pastoral counselling from Saint PaulUniversity. While pursuing her PhD from the University of Ottawa, she drew from cultural anthropology, philosophy, theology, sociology, psychotherapy and family therapy.
“I don't think any one perspective can lead us to the depth of inquiry we need to understand the complex issues that are facing us today,” says Lee. She has already completed an in-depth study of eight problem gamblers and their spouses funded by the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre, which awarded her a 2001-2002 postdoctoral fellowship. Her research corroborated earlier work in the field, which found a high representation of abuse and other childhood trauma in both gamblers and their spouses.
Lee was recently awarded a one-year research award of $172,000 by the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre to test the effectiveness of her training program for counsellors who work with problem gambling from organizations funded by the Ontario government. “The counsellors will be the research subjects of this study,” she says. “Counsellors who are found to be competent in the model will be recruited in the future as my research partners to test the effectiveness of the Congruence Model with their clients.”
