Gambling Disorder, Second Edition

Book excerpt: 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.