Last updated: 11/14/2018
Author: Addictions.com Medical Review

Reading Time: 3minutes

While no actual physical components drive it, a gambling addiction can take hold of a person’s life in much the same way as an alcohol or drug addiction. A loss of control over gambling can bleed into work life and relationships just like any other type of addiction. This leaves the mind and its thinking patterns as the main driving forces behind the addition. Likewise, treatment for gambling addiction relies heavily on behavioral approaches that help a person break the addiction by breaking the thinking patterns that feed it.

A “Process” Addiction

Finding treatment for gambling addiction doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

∙ a checklist to help you review your work and help you decide if you are ready to move on. This workbook is a selfstudy guide. In other words, it will give you all the information, instructions and activities you need to look at your gambling behaviour, identify your personal. This self-assessment is known as the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI). The PGSI is a reliable and standardised measure of at risk behaviour in problem gambling.

A process addiction is an uncontrollable urge to do something repeatedly in spite of how it affects your social and/or financial well-being. Gambling addictions fit the bill to a tee. Rather than the combined physical and mental urges brought on by substance abuse addictions, process addictions are behavior-based in terms of the behavior itself as the main driver of the addiction.

Because of this behavioral component, treatment for gambling addiction relies heavily on behavioral therapies. The rush and excitement (or “high”) gambling brings works in much the same way as the high experienced from doing drugs. Instead of a physical high driving the addiction, a person’s actions and choices set the addiction in motion when it comes to gambling. Treatment for gambling addiction focuses on replacing the actions and choices that trigger gambling with more productive ones.

Behavior Therapy

As treatment for gambling addiction centers around eliminating destructive gambling behaviors, behavior therapies (based on the classical conditioning model) are a commonly used treatment approach. According to the University of North Texas Libraries resource site, behavior therapy may involve one or more of three different techniques:

Aversion therapy
Imaginal desensitization
In vivo exposure

When used as a treatment for gambling addiction, aversion therapy uses an unpleasant stimulus, such as a small electric shock or loud noise to recondition a person’s response to gambling behavior.

Imaginal desensitization involves using relaxation techniques and visualization exercises to change a person’s physical response to gambling activities. Like imaginal desensitization, in vivo approaches combine relaxation techniques with the actual experience of gambling to recondition a person’s physical response.

Treatment for gambling addiction typically takes place in either individual or group therapy settings as part of a treatment program.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

While behavior therapy approaches work directly on a person’s gambling behaviors, cognitive behavioral therapy targets the underlying belief systems that fuel a gambling addiction. As a treatment for gambling addiction, the cognitive behavioral approach seeks to help a person see gambling in a different way. By changing a person’s underlying belief system, thoughts and behaviors naturally follow suit.

Cognitive behavioral therapy also addresses other underlying issues that may feed a gambling addiction, such as unresolved problems surrounding a person’s self-image, relationships with others and mental health problems. By working through any unresolved issues, a person has no reason to use gambling as an escape outlet.

As part of a cognitive behavioral treatment for gambling addiction, participants also confront any irrational beliefs they may have about gambling and the actual risks involved. Since a gambling addiction functions as a behavior-based, process addiction, behavior-based treatments work best when it comes to breaking the addiction’s hold on a person’s life.

Nov. 20 2012

Gambling Behaviour Checklist Template

Results of a new study by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health indicate that a developmental pattern of impulsiveness in young males is linked with gambling problems in late adolescence. Respondents considered to be in the high impulsivity track as early as first grade doubled the odds of meeting criteria for at-risk/problem gambling, and tripled the odds of meeting criteria for problem gambling.

The study is the first to link a developmental pattern of impulsivity—defined as a tendency to make rush decisions without carefully considering potential negative consequences—and late-adolescent gambling. Findings appear online in the journal Addiction.

The researchers studied 310 predominately African American (87%) and low socioeconomic (70%) males from first grade to late adolescence in an urban community in Baltimore, Maryland. Ratings of classroom behavior were based on a Teacher Report of Classroom Behavior Checklist and included items such as waits for turn, interrupts, and blurts out answers. Annual assessments were made from ages 11 through 15.

Students fell into two distinct trajectories: 41% of the sample had a high impulse trajectory and 59% a lower impulse trajectory. While impulsivity tended to decline as the boys matured, those with high level of impulsivity in first grade were far more likely to remain among the 41% at adolescence.

Gambling behavior was assessed through interviews with students at ages 17, 19, and 20. Self- reported gambling behavior was assessed using the South Oaks Gambling Screen-Revised for Adolescents. The investigators found that boys in the high impulse trajectory group were twice as likely to meet the criteria for “at-risk” gambling behavior and three times the risk for the risk for problem gambling.

Over all, two-thirds of the boys in the study (67%) reported they engaged in some gambling, 20% met criteria for at-risk gambling, and 9% met the criteria as problem gamblers.

Gambling Behaviour Checklist Training

“Our findings reveal that there is a considerable link between youth impulsivity in the younger years and gambling issues as older teens,” says Silvia Martins, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Epidemiology at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. “This has important implications and provides clear research support for targeting impulsivity to prevent youth problem gambling.”

While other research has shown a connection between impulsiveness and gambling, those studies measured impulsivity at a single point in time and gambling either concurrently or at a later point in time, rather than linking gambling in the late teens to traits of impulsiveness as early as first grade. The earlier studies also based their findings on a predominantly white population sample. What further sets the current research apart is that it specifically considers socioeconomic status of urban minority youth, a population that is disproportionately more likely to exhibit both impulsivity and problem gambling.

“We see this as a study strength, given the small amount of research there is on the impulsivity-gambling association among urban minority populations. However, generalizations to the larger population should be made with caution,” warns Dr. Martins, principal investigator on the research.

“We also chose to base our study on males only because females tend to exhibit lower levels of impulsivity and show different patterns of development compared to males,” observed Dr. Martins.

Noteworthy, too, is the fact that the Columbia researchers used teacher-reported assessments rather than participants’ self-reported measures of impulsivity as was the case in earlier works. “Teacher ratings of youth impulsivity tend to be more consistent and reliable for predicting future psychiatric disorder diagnoses compared to adolescent self-reports,” says Dr. Martins.

“From our findings we see that teaching impulse control early in elementary school may have a long term benefit in decreasing the likelihood of youth following an elevated trajectory of impulsivity.”

Gambling Behaviour Checklist Definition

The study was supported by grants from NIH.