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Do Online Gambling Products Require Traditional Therapy for Gambling Disorder to Change? Evidence from Focus Group Interviews with Mental Health Professionals Treating Online Gamblers

Online gambling has significantly altered the situational and structural characteristics of gambling products, to the extent that online gamblers might be substantially different from traditional offline gamblers. A growing body of literature has identified the evolving features of online gambling a...

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Autores principales: Lopez-Gonzalez, Hibai, Jimenez-Murcia, Susana, Rius-Buitrago, Alicia, Griffiths, Mark D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8520338/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34655397
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10899-021-10064-9
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author Lopez-Gonzalez, Hibai
Jimenez-Murcia, Susana
Rius-Buitrago, Alicia
Griffiths, Mark D.
author_facet Lopez-Gonzalez, Hibai
Jimenez-Murcia, Susana
Rius-Buitrago, Alicia
Griffiths, Mark D.
author_sort Lopez-Gonzalez, Hibai
collection PubMed
description Online gambling has significantly altered the situational and structural characteristics of gambling products, to the extent that online gamblers might be substantially different from traditional offline gamblers. A growing body of literature has identified the evolving features of online gambling and the individuals who engage in it. However, beyond understanding the individual characteristics of this subgroup, relatively less effort has been made to examine whether existing cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) approaches are still entirely relevant for online problem gamblers, or whether changes are needed to adapt according to gambling mode of access. To understand what kind of challenges online gambling poses to mental health professionals dealing with disordered gamblers, four focus groups comprising 28 Spanish participants were carried out. All the treatment providers had ongoing experience with online gamblers undergoing treatment, and included clinical psychologists, mental health social workers, and a medical doctor. The data were examined using thematic analysis. The analysis identified five main themes that characterised online gamblers: (1) being of younger age, (2) lack of conflicts at home and at work/educational centre, rarely presenting violent or aggressive behaviour, (3) gambling disorder only being identified by overdue debt, (4) co-occurring conditions with technology-related abuse rather than other substance-related addictions, and (5) skill-based gambling. The study highlights mental health workers’ perceived insecurities about how to best treat online gamblers, and discusses the specific characteristics that CBT for gambling disorder might need to incorporate to adjust for this particular group of gamblers. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10899-021-10064-9.
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spelling pubmed-85203382021-10-18 Do Online Gambling Products Require Traditional Therapy for Gambling Disorder to Change? Evidence from Focus Group Interviews with Mental Health Professionals Treating Online Gamblers Lopez-Gonzalez, Hibai Jimenez-Murcia, Susana Rius-Buitrago, Alicia Griffiths, Mark D. J Gambl Stud Original Paper Online gambling has significantly altered the situational and structural characteristics of gambling products, to the extent that online gamblers might be substantially different from traditional offline gamblers. A growing body of literature has identified the evolving features of online gambling and the individuals who engage in it. However, beyond understanding the individual characteristics of this subgroup, relatively less effort has been made to examine whether existing cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) approaches are still entirely relevant for online problem gamblers, or whether changes are needed to adapt according to gambling mode of access. To understand what kind of challenges online gambling poses to mental health professionals dealing with disordered gamblers, four focus groups comprising 28 Spanish participants were carried out. All the treatment providers had ongoing experience with online gamblers undergoing treatment, and included clinical psychologists, mental health social workers, and a medical doctor. The data were examined using thematic analysis. The analysis identified five main themes that characterised online gamblers: (1) being of younger age, (2) lack of conflicts at home and at work/educational centre, rarely presenting violent or aggressive behaviour, (3) gambling disorder only being identified by overdue debt, (4) co-occurring conditions with technology-related abuse rather than other substance-related addictions, and (5) skill-based gambling. The study highlights mental health workers’ perceived insecurities about how to best treat online gamblers, and discusses the specific characteristics that CBT for gambling disorder might need to incorporate to adjust for this particular group of gamblers. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10899-021-10064-9. Springer US 2021-10-16 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8520338/ /pubmed/34655397 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10899-021-10064-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Paper
Lopez-Gonzalez, Hibai
Jimenez-Murcia, Susana
Rius-Buitrago, Alicia
Griffiths, Mark D.
Do Online Gambling Products Require Traditional Therapy for Gambling Disorder to Change? Evidence from Focus Group Interviews with Mental Health Professionals Treating Online Gamblers
title Do Online Gambling Products Require Traditional Therapy for Gambling Disorder to Change? Evidence from Focus Group Interviews with Mental Health Professionals Treating Online Gamblers
title_full Do Online Gambling Products Require Traditional Therapy for Gambling Disorder to Change? Evidence from Focus Group Interviews with Mental Health Professionals Treating Online Gamblers
title_fullStr Do Online Gambling Products Require Traditional Therapy for Gambling Disorder to Change? Evidence from Focus Group Interviews with Mental Health Professionals Treating Online Gamblers
title_full_unstemmed Do Online Gambling Products Require Traditional Therapy for Gambling Disorder to Change? Evidence from Focus Group Interviews with Mental Health Professionals Treating Online Gamblers
title_short Do Online Gambling Products Require Traditional Therapy for Gambling Disorder to Change? Evidence from Focus Group Interviews with Mental Health Professionals Treating Online Gamblers
title_sort do online gambling products require traditional therapy for gambling disorder to change? evidence from focus group interviews with mental health professionals treating online gamblers
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8520338/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34655397
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10899-021-10064-9
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