The Gambling Disorder Treatment Handbook

This handbook provides mental health professionals with a thorough understanding of the biopsychosocial nature of disordered gambling and shares current evidence-based theories, interventions and strategies to use in clinical practice. It provides guidance for working with individuals of any age and covers different gambling modes, activities and subtypes, including new forms of gambling through online and virtual platforms. Drawing on the authors' substantial experience working with and researching gambling addiction, it considers how treatment can be specialized for particular client groups, including trauma survivors, military, older adults, adolescents and diverse communities. It provides detailed diagnostic and screening resources and includes important information on the financial and legal aspects. This is essential reading for any therapist treating clients with gambling disorder.

Seventeen years since the first edition and eight years since DSM-5 reclassified "pathological gambling," Gambling Disorder: A Clinical Guide to Treatment is here to provide clinicians with the latest thinking about gambling disorder. It is an exciting moment in the history of gambling research, with scholarly inquiry into the epidemiology, etiology, neurobiology, and treatment of this disorder growing by leaps and bounds. However, many clinicians remain unaware of the disorder's symptoms, though common, and are uninformed about available treatments, many developed quite recently. Acting on this knowledge, the editors set out to compile a guide that would equip clinicians to recognize patients exhibiting signs of the disorder, competently assess them, and work to identify effective treatment options. In addition, the book explores different ways the disorder may manifest across genders and among older and younger patients, forensic issues, and the relatively new area of study, online gambling and gambling-gaming convergence. Not so much a revision as a reconceptualization, Gambling Disorder: A Clinical Guide to Treatment brings a new cast of contributors, a totally restructured text, and the research and clinical wisdom amassed over the past decade and a half to bear on this critically important, yet often overlooked, disorder.

The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Disordered Gambling is a complete guide to the current empirical literature relating to the conceptualization, assessment, and treatment of disordered gambling. The international contributors are all experienced, practicing clinicians who discuss gambling within a global context. Best-practice guidelines for the clinical management of problem and disordered gambling Contains empirically derived findings that translate research into practical clinical applications that clinicians and counselors can use in understanding and treating problem gamblers Brings together a distinguished international group of scholars whose contributions discuss gambling as it occurs around the globe Clearly organized into sections that cover conceptualization, research, assessment, treatment, and special topics

Over the past decade, legal wagering has expanded rapidly in North America. In 1998 alone, people lost 50 billion dollars in legal betting and it is estimated that illegal wagering is twice that amount. A recent government report, based on the broadest population survey, concludes that the lifetime and pathological gamblers in the U.S. range between 4 and 10 million persons and is growing. If we include the families affected by problem gambling then the potential impact is indeed prodigious. Virtually no community in the U.S. and Canada is left untouched by entertainment or problem gambling. Treating problem gambling has evolved from a small group of practitioners in the 1980's working in specialty impatient units into an international enterprise that affects the caseload of many mental health professionals. Owing to its quiet origins, problem gambling treatment strategies are not well known throughout the clinical community. Consequently the average clinician is him/herself "learning as they go." This approach does not benefit either client or therapist. As the book's first chapter makes clear, problem gambling differs significantly from substance abuse, its nearest clinical relative. Not attending to these differences leads to poor results and clinical failure. This book is the one essential tool needed by clinicians treating or likely to treat problem gambling. Written by a clinician with wide experience, it is intended for the general clinician treating or likely to treat problem gambling desiring a comprehensive, yet user-friendly guide. Assessment and treatment of problem gambling and those affected by it is discussed Includes diagnostic instruments developed by the author An integrative approach is taken with a special focus on cultural concerns and clinical applications for women and minorities Integration of spirituality in treatment is covered

Overcoming Pathological Gambling, Therapist Guide provides clinicians with session-by-session instructions for implementing an effective, CBT-based treatment for pathological gambling. The treatment outlined helps clients to not only overcome their problem, but also to deal with the many consequences of their excessive gambling including financial problems and interpersonal conflicts.

A research-based guide to controlling the destructive urge to gamble From Howard Shaffer, PhD, a noted expert on gambling addiction, and Harvard Health Publications comes Change Your Gambling, Change your Life, a landmark new book which explains how gambling problems are related to other underlying issues: such as anxiety, mood fluctuation, difficulty with impulse control, and substance abuse problems. Dr. Shaffer offers a series of self-tests to help evaluate the degree of gambling problem and analyze the psychological and social context of the behavior, with specific strategies and approaches for ending the problems with simple tools that anyone can do. Explains why many people have a problem controlling their urge to gamble and how that can be corrected Includes a toolbox of resources for anyone who wants to stop the vicious cycle of gambling Offers advice for avoiding slips and preventing backslides and how to deal with the consequences With candor and expert advice, Change Your Gambling, Change Your Life provides proven techniques for controlling the urge to gamble.

Inside my new book, Gambling Addiction Handbook: Signs, Symptoms, Effects & Treatments, I break down the facts about gambling addiction, into a simple to understand and easy to follow handbook that anyone can use to understand gambling addiction, its causes, complications of gambling and gambling addiction treatments. Inside my gambling addiction handbook, you will learn about the following aspects of gambling addiction: What Gambling Addiction is? How Gambling Addiction Starts? The Effects of Gambling Addiction? Complications Associated with Gambling Addiction. Identifying Signs of Gambling Addiction. How to Tell If Someone Is Addicted to Gambling? Gambling Addiction Facts. Treatment Options for Gambling Addiction. Plus so much more... Let me help you understand gambling addiction and guide you through the process of not only understanding the condition, but how treatment and ongoing support can help reduce and even cure gambling addiction with long-term results.

Take control of your habit and your life! Struggling with a gambling habit? If you feel that a 'flutter' has evolved into something out of your control, this indispensable book is for you. This self-help manual uses cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) techniques, aspects of which were pioneered by clinical psychologist Professor Alex Blaszczynski, and now used all over the world, to help with gambling addiction. It will help you to understand how your own gambling problem has developed and what is keeping it going; also, crucially, how to develop the motivation to stop and control any future urges to gamble again. This fully revised and updated new edition takes into account the growth of sport betting and the increased ease of online gambling, as well improvements in clinical interventions. Specifically, you will learn: · Who is put at risk by gambling, with support given to friends and families · Step-by-step recovery techniques OVERCOMING self-help guides use clinically proven techniques to treat long-standing and disabling conditions, both psychological and physical. Many guides in the Overcoming series are recommended under the Reading Well Books on Prescription scheme. Series Editor: Professor Peter Cooper

The past five years have witnessed dramatic advances in research on pathological gambling -- a diagnosis often overlooked by clinicians who are unaware not only of the personal and social consequences of pathological gambling, but also of the possible treatment options. Today, clinicians can choose from an array of treatment options to substantially improve the lives of patients with this disabling illness. Eloquently attesting to this extraordinary progress, this remarkable clinician's guide comprises the most extensive coverage on public health, clinical characteristics and treatment, psychotherapy and psychopharmacology, and interventions for adolescents, adults, and older adults. Written by the world's leading researchers on psychiatric aspects of gambling, this truly comprehensive volume discusses how to diagnose pathological gambling and provides the tools to do so. Here, 32 experts detail the clinical phenomenology, etiology, and treatment of pathological gambling, highlighting the current clinical approaches most likely to lead to early identification, symptom remission, and improvement maintenance. Useful appendixes provide specific tests, scales, and diagnostic criteria following four major sections of the book: Public Health and Epidemiology discusses prevalence and definitions of recreational, problem, and pathological gambling; the relationship between the different levels of gambling severity; and gambling's effects on societal, familial, and individual health and well-being. Clinical Characteristics covers the symptoms and sequelae of pathological gambling and the differences among adolescents, older adults, and men and women, and shows that pathological gambling -- rather than being categorized as a single disorder -- shares important features with many disorders, among them obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders, affective spectrum disorders, addiction, and impulse-control disorder. Etiology details the realms of both psychology (behavioral, cognitive, and dispositional theories) and neurobiology (noradrenergic, serotonergic, dopaminergic, and opioidergic systems as well as familial and inherited factors) to explain the behavior of pathological gambling -- knowledge that may prove useful in understanding a range of addictive and impulsive disorders. Prevention and Treatment emphasizes the vital role of the clinician in prevention efforts, including a prevention strategy tailored specifically for adolescents and young adults; discusses a variety of behavioral and pharmacological interventions for patients including self-help and professional-based interventions for family members; and concludes with assessments useful in diagnosing pathological gambling and monitoring symptom change. Psychiatrists, psychiatric researchers, and other mental health care professionals will welcome this book as their most up-to-date source for invaluable knowledge about and research from the world's recognized experts on pathological gambling.

This handbook shows the wide perspective cognitive-behavioural treatment can offer to health professionals, the vast majority of whom now recognize that cognitive behavioural procedures are very useful in treating many 'mental' disorders, even if certain disciplines continue to favour other kinds of treatment. This book offers a wide range of structured programmes for the treatment of various psychological/psychiatric disorders as classified by the DSM-IV. The layout will be familiar to the majority of health professionals in the description of mental disorders and their later treatment. It is divided into seven sections, covering anxiety disorders, sexual disorders, dissociative, somatoform, impulse control disorders, emotional disorders and psychotic and organic disorders. Throughout the twenty-three chapters, this book offers the health professional a structured guide with which to start tackling a whole series of 'mental' disorders and offers pointers as to where to find more detailed information. The programmes outlined should, it is hoped, prove more effective than previous approaches with lower economic costs and time investment for the patient and therapist.