Zeitschrift für Suchtforschung und -therapie

Abstrakt

An Evaluation of the Efficiency of Currently Used Addiction Treatment Methods in Addressing Gambling Addiction and Relapse Prevention

Poorvi S Govindaraju

The scope of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of treatments used to address gambling addiction: a globally spread condition that involves the uncontrollable urge to partake in playing risky games for the possibility to earn money. This condition is caused by various psychological, neurological, and environmental influences, which can affect one’s daily life, as well as the lives of people around them. Over the years, various treatment programs and medications have been employed to overcome the prevalence of gambling addiction. However, the population of gambling addicts within the United States has only increased within the past couple of decades, bringing the efficiency of such solutions into question. Consequently, this study aims to identify and interact with health professionals and former gambling addicts through a mixed-method approach consisting of a Delphi panel and an interview process to further evaluate the effectiveness of these solutions and potentially change methods used to approach addictions by creating an optimal solution for clients. As a result of this study, it can be concluded that although treatment programs and medications that are being provided for clients to use are effective solutions for gambling addiction, they are not the most optimal solutions to use as they contain significant limitations such as the lack of an incentive for clients to continue treatment programs and the inability to address the high risk of relapse amongst clients effectively.