
Gerhard GmelLausanne University Hospital | CHUV · Service d'alcoologie
Gerhard Gmel
PhD
About
498
Publications
165,777
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
51,334
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
October 2008 - present
January 2003 - present
Canadian Center of Mental Health
Position
- Senior Researcher
October 1994 - present

Addiction Suisse
Position
- Senior Researcher
Publications
Publications (498)
Background
Individuals with a minority sexual orientation have consistently been found to face a greater risk of mental health problems and problematic substance use than heterosexual individuals. The present study examined whether differences in alcohol use or alcohol use disorder (AUD) symptoms across the spectrum of sexual orientations could be...
BACKGROUND AND AIMS
OAT is a well developed and successful treatment strategy for opioid dependent patients in Europe. It has significantly contributed to the fight against the HIV and HCV pandemics, leading to an increased life expectancy in this population. Building on the OAT experiences in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland and their models of c...
Background Many studies on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic reported that significant proportions of drinkers have either increased or decreased their consumption. These diverging trends may indicate a polarisation of drinking behaviours, suggesting that the same source of stress caused some people to drink more and others to drink less, among t...
Aim:
To evaluate the risk of alcohol consumption after acute coronary syndromes (ACS).
Methods:
A total of 6557 patients hospitalized for ACS at 4 Swiss centres were followed over 12 months. Weekly alcohol consumption was collected at baseline and 12 months. Binge drinking was defined as consumption of ≥6 units of alcohol on one occasion. Major...
Objective
To estimate the effects of providing access to an alcohol intervention based on a smartphone.
Design
Randomised controlled trial..
Setting
Four higher education institutions in Switzerland.
Participants
1770 students (≥18 years) who screened positive for unhealthy alcohol use (ie, a score on the alcohol use disorders identification tes...
Zusammenfassung: Zielsetzung: Die dritte Ausgabe des Buchs „Alkohol: Kein gewöhnliches Konsumgut“ schlägt kosteneffektive, wirksame Maßnahmen zur Reduktion des Alkoholkonsums und dessen Folgen vor. Die Umsetzung dieser Maßnahmen wird aus Schweizer Sicht eingeschätzt. Methodik: Aktuelle Entwicklungen und Praktiken in der Schweiz werden unter folgend...
Single-measurement-point data collection to assess change has increased with studies assessing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and of its containment, despite evidence of its lack of validity. Retrospective change is not equivalent to change in repeated self-reported measures giving raise to questions about the validity of the former. This pape...
Background:
Despite considerable efforts devoted to the development of prevention interventions aiming at reducing unhealthy alcohol use in tertiary students, their delivery remains often challenging. Interventions including information technology are promising given their potential to reach large parts of the population.
Objective:
This study a...
Background
Substance-induced consciousness alterations (CA) have mainly been studied among users of psychedelics but not among people using street drugs.
Aims
Explore occurrences of three different types of substance-induced CA [ego dissolution (ED), visual pseudo-hallucinations (VPH), anxiety/paranoia (A/P)] and their perceived influences on life...
Background
Video gaming is a popular activity among young people. Time spent with gaming was found to be only moderately associated with gaming disorder. However, patterns of binge gaming (playing more than 5 h consecutively) were rarely considered in research on gaming. This study explores how binge gaming frequency is related with gaming disorder...
This paper aims to provide an overview of the contemporary quantitative methods to assess alcohol consumption. We identified and rated six data collection methods according to four typical aims (i.e. to assess: per capita consumption, drinking patterns, event-specific consumption, and consumption over time) and five desirable features (low cognitiv...
From comparisons of World Health Organization statistics, it is clear that people in lower-income countries experience more harms per litre of alcohol and different types of harms compared to those from higher-income countries. Yet studies in higher-income countries dominate research on policies to prevent alcohol problems. The paper reports on res...
Background and aims
Intense use of smartphones is associated with mental health problems and low well-being. However, little is known about the mental health and well-being of non- and low-level users. This study investigated the possibly non-linear associations between time spent using a smartphone, including non-users, and mental health and well-...
The association between alcohol use and sensation seeking is well known. Less is known about whether longitudinal changes in alcohol use are associated with changes in sensation seeking and in which direction influence might flow. 5125 men aged 20.0 years old at baseline and 25.4 years old at follow-up responded to the Brief Sensation Seeking Quest...
Objective:
To investigate the risk factors for and the consequences (ie, substance use disorders (SUD), depression, personality traits) of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in young Swiss men.
Design:
This is a three-wave cohort study. Risk factors were measured at baseline (2010-2012) and at follow-up 1 (FU1; 2012-2014), while the consequences and T...
BACKGROUND
Despite considerable efforts devoted to the development of prevention interventions aiming at reducing unhealthy alcohol use in tertiary students, their delivery remains often challenging. Interventions including information technology are promising given their potential to reach large parts of the population.
OBJECTIVE
This study aims...
Background and aims:
The alcohol purchase task (APT), which presents a scenario and asks participants how many drinks they would purchase and consume at different prices, generates indices of alcohol reward value that have shown robust associations with alcohol-related outcomes in numerous studies. The aim was to test its prospective validity at 4...
Background and aims:
Survey questions on usual quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption are regularly used in screening tools to identify drinkers requiring intervention. The aim of this study was to measure age-based differences in quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and how...
This article presents the data obtained from the scoring of 24 stallions of the Franches-Montagnes (FM) horse breed by six experts of this breed. The experts scored six traits at walk and eight at trot from the video recordings of these stallions walking and trotting on a treadmill during an incremental speed test. The scores were given on a scale...
Aims
Survey questions on usual quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption are regularly used in screening tools to identify drinkers requiring intervention. The aim of this study is to examine age-based differences in quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and how this relates to th...
Suite à l'apparition du coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 vers le début de l'année 2020, une série de mesures ont été mises en place en Suisse à partir de mars 2020 (appelées ici mesures COVID-19), telles que la fermeture des écoles et de nombreux commerces, des restrictions sur les déplacements et la limitation des rassemblements à cinq personnes. La situati...
Background
Previous research has demonstrated a preventive effect of the alcohol policy environment on alcohol consumption. However, little is known about the heterogeneity of this effect. Our aim was to examine the extent of heterogeneity in the relationship between the strictness of alcohol policy environments and heavy drinking and to identify p...
ABSTRACT
Objective
To investigate the risk factors for and the
consequences (ie, substance use disorders (SUD),
depression, personality traits) of traumatic brain injury
(TBI) in young Swiss men.
Design
This is a three-wave
cohort study. Risk factors
were measured at baseline (2010–2012) and at follow-up
1 (FU1; 2012–2014), while the consequences...
Aims of the study:
In Switzerland, there has been a boom in the market for cannabidiol (CBD) products in recent years. However, little is known on the prevalence, modes of administration and motives for use of CBD products. The aim of the present study was to fill this gap using recent (2019) data from the Cohort Study on Substance Use Risk Factor...
Background and Aims
There are concerns about the potential impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on substance use (SU) and other reinforcing behaviours (ORB). This paper investigates changes in SU and ORB among young men during the COVID-19 crisis (i.e. March–June 2020).
Methods
Before and during the COVID-19 crisis, 2,344 young Sw...
The prevalence of different routes of administration (ROAs) of illicit drugs other than cannabis was examined in young Swiss men, in addition to the association between socio-demographics and adverse outcomes and particular ROAs. Our sample consisted of 754 men (mean age = 25.4 ± 1.2 years) who participated in the Cohort Study on Substance Use Risk...
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and its countermeasures may have had a significant impact on the psychological well-being of specific population subgroups. The present study investigated whether sexual minority men (defined here as attracted partly or exclusively to men) from an ongoing cohort study of young Swiss men experienced different psycho...
Aims:
The COVID-19 pandemic caused many disturbances to daily life worldwide and may also have significantly affected people's psychological well-being. The present study aimed to describe the psychological impact of the crisis on our sample of young Swiss men and to examine differences due to their linguistic region, experiencing COVID-19 symptom...
Introduction
The heavy drinking of others may negatively affect an individual on several dimensions of life. Until now, there is scarce research about how to judge the severity of various experiences of such harms. This study aims to empirically scale the severity of such harm items and to determine who is at most risk of these harms.
Methods
We u...
Objective: Change talk has been proposed as a mechanism of change in motivational interviewing (MI) by mediating the link between MI technical skills and behavioral outcomes. We tested the influence of therapists' relational skills on this mediation model. Method: Secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial of individual brief MI for heavy...
Aims
The present study aimed to investigate whether the psychological impact of the COVID-19 crisis varied with regards to young Swiss men’s pre-crisis level of education and socioeconomic status and to changes in their work situation due to it.
Methods
A cohort of 2345 young Swiss men (from 21 out of 26 Swiss cantons; mean age = 29) completed sur...
Background and Aims: Internet gambling has recently grown in popularity, but relatively little is known about how online and the combination of online and offline (mixed) gambling are associated with gambling disorder (GD) and related problems. The present research examined in a cohort study sample of young Swiss men how their gambling activities a...
Background and aims
Social determinants are closely related to addiction, both as a cause and a consequence of substance use and other addictive behaviors. The present paper examines prosocialness (i.e. the tendency to help, empathize, and care for others) among a population of young males. We compared prosocialness across different types of addict...
Jedes Jahr sind in der Schweiz etwa 18 000 ehemalige Konsumierende von illegalen Opiaten und Opioiden in einer Substitutionsbehandlung (mit Methadon, Buprenorphin, retardiertem Morphin) oder erhalten Diacetylmorphin (pharmazeutisch hergestelltes Heroin). Auch wenn sie dem gleichen Ziel dienen, so hat jede dieser Behandlungen ihre eigene Behandlungs...
Importance
There are concerns that the use of water pipes to consume cannabis is associated with increased risks of engaging in more addictive behaviors.
Objective
To examine whether consuming cannabis with a water pipe was associated with later consumption of other illicit drugs compared with not using a water pipe.
Design, Setting, and Particip...
Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted daily life worldwide. It may also have had a psychological impact, especially on those with less resources already before the crisis and those who reported substantial changes to their work situation.
Objectives
To investigate whether socioeconomic status before the crisis and changes in work situation d...
Introduction
Substance use disorder, depression and sexual minority are well documented risk factors for suicidal behaviour, far less is known about behavioural addictions.
Objectives
First, to explore associations between behavioural addictions (gaming, gambling, cybersex, internet, smartphone, work) at age 25 and the incidence and reoccurrence o...
Background
Interrupted time series (ITS) are an important tool for determining whether alcohol control policies, as well as other policy interventions, are successful over and above secular trends or chance. Subsequent to estimating whether a policy has had an effect, quantifying the key outcomes, such as the number of prevented deaths, is of prima...
PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic and its countermeasures may have had a significant impact on the psychological well-being of specific population subgroups. The present study investigated whether sexual minority men from an ongoing cohort study of young Swiss men experienced different psychological impacts, levels of substance use and addictive behavio...
Objective: It is well known that certain personality traits are associated with alcohol use. Because less is known about it, we wished to investigate whether changes in alcohol use were longitudinally associated with changes in personality and in which direction the influence or causation might flow.
Methods: Data came from the self-reported questi...
Background
There is a need for empirical studies assessing the psychometric properties of self-reported alcohol use as measures of excessive chronic drinking (ECD) compared to those of objective measures, such as ethyl glucuronide (EtG).
Objectives
To test the quality of self-reported measures of alcohol use and of risky single-occasion drinking (...
AimsThe COVID-19 pandemic affected daily life worldwide. In addition to its tangible physical impacts, it may also have affected those who had been especially vulnerable already before the crisis and those who experienced substantial changes to their work situation during it. The present study aimed to investigate whether the psychological impact o...
AimsThe COVID-19 pandemic caused many disturbances to daily life worldwide and may also have significantly affected people’s psychological well-being. The present study aimed to describe the psychological impact of the crisis on our sample of young Swiss men and to examine differences due to their linguistic region, experiencing COVID-19 symptoms a...
Background
Information about correlates of cannabis vaping in Europe is scarce.
Methods
In a cohort of 1613 Swiss young males currently using cannabis, we used logistic regression, adjusting for age, linguistic region and education to assess the association between sensation seeking, substance use and sociodemographic variables with cannabis vapin...
The objective of this study was to assess the association between tobacco/nicotine use and type and intensity of sport. Data were drawn from the second follow-up of the Cohort Study on Substance Use Risk Factors. Young Swiss men completed a questionnaire about tobacco/nicotine use (cigarette, vaping, snus, snuff), type and intensity of sport and ot...
This four-wave longitudinal study aimed to examine the associations between retrospectively perceived parenting profiles in adolescence and the development of alcohol use disorder (AUD) throughout emerging adulthood. The cohort consisted of 190 young Swiss men who completed retrospective reports of parenting at baseline and a short AUD self-report...
Background
Randomised controlled trials have shown some benefits to using e-cigarettes (ECs) to facilitate smoking reduction and cessation, but real-world observational studies have rarely confirmed this. The present study looked at EC use and smoking during a four-year longitudinal study of young men. It compares general population findings with a...
Background:
Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conduct disorder (CD), and sensation seeking (SS) have been consistently related to a higher risk of substance use (SU) and substance use disorder (SUD).
Objectives:
To investigate the relationship between ADHD and prevalence rates in males at age 20 and age 25, the initiation of SU an...
Background and aims
It is well documented that individuals with a minority sexual orientation face greater risks of problematic substance use (e.g. heavy episodic drinking, alcohol use disorder) and mental health problems. Far less is known about how that risk varies within this population and their risk of behavioural addictions. This study estima...
Although young men or young adults with mental health disorders are at higher risk to engage in problematic drinking, they typically evince stronger associations between protective behavioral strategies (PBS) and fewer alcohol outcomes. This study aimed to contribute to this line of research by examining the moderating effect of depression, bipolar...
Background and Aims
Cannabis use disorder (CUD) is frequent in adolescence and often goes into remission towards adulthood. This study aimed to estimate trajectories of CUD severity (CUDS) in Swiss men from 20 to 25 years old and to identify prospective predictors of these trajectories.
Design
Latent class growth analysis of self‐reported CUDS in...
Introduction and aims:
To better understand the relationship between alcohol consumption and living with children, we assessed whether the association varied for men and women across diverse countries and whether this relationship was moderated by country-level gender inequality.
Design and methods:
We used Hierarchical Linear Modelling to analy...
Introduction
Social cohesion, depression, and problematic substance use are intertwined and poorly understood. This study aimed to examine cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between social cohesion, depression and problematic substance use among young men, age 21-25.
Methods
We used 2nd wave (t1, 2012-2014, N=6020) and 3rd wave (t2, 201...
Gait quality, that is, the way horses move according to functional and aesthetic principles, englobes many traits that are scored by experts during breeding competitions. The experts can score a trait on a subjective valuating (SV) scale or on a linear profiling (LP) scale representing the biological extremes of the population. However, the reliabi...
Aims
Survey items for measuring harms experienced from others' drinking (AHTO) have been developed primarily to measure type of harm and not severity. However, some type of harms may produce more negative effects than others. We aimed to compare the perceived severity of a comprehensive list of AHTO items to assess consistency in subjective ratings...
Some authors recently underlined the existence of programs generating invalid responses in online surveys as an emerging threat for the different crowdsourced research fields (e.g., botnets, form fillers or survey bots). Accordingly, online data research might include computer-generated sets of responses representing invalid data at risk of largely...
Background:
Unhealthy alcohol use is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among young people, including university students. Delivering secondary prevention interventions against unhealthy alcohol use is challenging. Information technology has the potential to reach large parts of the general population. The present study is proposed to test...
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is frequently comorbid with other psychiatric disorders. However, few studies investigated the psychometric properties of AUD screening tools in presence of co-occurring disorders. This study examined the diagnostic accuracy of a short AUD screening tool among young adults, in the presence of high vs. low or moderate symp...
(a) Objective
This study aimed to identify trajectories of alcohol use (AU) and their associations with the development of alcohol use disorder (AUD) among young men with different weekly drinking patterns.
(b) Method
A longitudinal latent class analysis integrating several aspects of AU, such as drinking quantity and frequency on weekends vs work...
Aims:
To estimate age-specific changes in hospital admissions for alcohol intoxication following two consecutive restrictions on off-premises alcohol sales introduced in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland.
Design:
Primary analyses used interrupted autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) time series analyses (repeated cross-sectional), with...
Aim: To study caregiver reports of children’s experience of physical harm and exposure to family violence due to others’ drinking in nine societies, assess the relationship of harm with household drinking pattern and evaluate whether gender and education of caregiver affect these relationships.
Method: Using data on adult caregivers from the Gender...
Background and aims:
Cybersex use (CU) is highly prevalent in Switzerland's population, particularly among young men. CU may have negative consequences if it gets out of control. This study estimated prevalence of CU, frequency of CU (FCU), and problematic CU (PCU) and their correlates.
Methods:
A non-selective sample of young Swiss men (N = 5,3...
Positive social interactions are crucial for human well-being. Elevated prenatal exposure to testosterone as indicated by a low second-to-fourth finger length ratio (2D:4D) relates to more aggressive/hostile behavior in men of low 2D:4D, especially in challenging situations. How much people enjoy interacting with others is determined by the persona...
Background and aims:
Behavioral addictions (BAs) and substance use disorders (SUDs) tend to co-occur; both are associated with mental health problems (MHPs). This study aimed to estimate the proportion of variance in the severity of MHPs explained by BAs and SUDs, individually and shared between addictions.
Methods:
A sample of 5,516 young Swiss...
Background:
How much a randomized controlled trial (RCT) sample is representative of or differs from its source population is a challenging question, with major implications for generalizability of results. It is particularly crucial for freely-available web-based interventions tested in RCTs since they are designed to reach broad populations and...
Background and aims:
Short screenings for alcohol use disorder (AUD) are crucial for public health purposes, but current self-reported measures have several pitfalls and may be unreliable. The main aim of our study was to provide empirical evidence on the psychometric performance of self-reports currently used. Our research questions were: compare...
Background
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is known to co-occur with other addictions, as well as with mental health problems. However, the effects of other addictions co-occurring with AUD on mental health problems were rarely studied and not considering them may bias estimates of the association between AUD and mental health problems. This study inves...
We investigated whether adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) predicts risky substance use and substance use disorders (SUDs), and its impact on the course of these problematic substance use patterns. Our sample included 4975 Swiss men (mean age 20 ± 1.2 years) who participated in the baseline and 15-month follow-up assessments of t...
Objective
Although there is evidence that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms are positively related to alcohol use and related problems among young adults, little research has examined the mechanisms that might explain this association. In response, this study examined the mediating effects of coping and enhancement drinking m...