Study on Factors Associated with Repeated Gambling Among Gamblers Anonymous Participants

People who participate in public gambling in Japan (hereinafter, gamblers) are estimated to include 16.7 million pachinko gamblers, 14.9 million horse race gamblers, 2.5 million boat race gamblers, and 2 million bicycle race gambler. Some gamblers can never resist the desire and drive for gambling and gamble repeatedly without taking any breaks, resulting in having social life problems such as multiple debts, unemployment, and family collapse. This state is called gambling disorder in the DSM-5. The number of gambling disorder estimated from the adult population in Japan is as many as 5.36 million (4.8% of adult population) in total, including 4.38 million men (8.7% of adult male) and 0.98 million women (1.8% of adult female) (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare). Treatment takes a few years and its purpose is to make patients quit gambling. However, many of the patients succumb to their addiction, and it can be said that this gambling disorder is a disease that is difficult to completely cure.
An effective therapeutic approach for gambling disorder is psychological therapies. However, at present, there are a small number of specialized medical institutions that provide psychological therapies for

this disease. Gamblers Anonymous (GA) actually plays a psychotherapy-like role . GA is a self-help group aiming at recovery from gambling addiction, in which anonymity, i.e., no need to reveal the real names of participants, is ensured and regular meetings (4 to 12 times per month) are held. In the meetings, an environment is created in which participants “just speak, just listen, and do not discuss” so that they can talk without anxiety. Furthermore, the participants implement “12 steps for recovery” such as “having an insight into the disease, reviewing failure, and making amends for wrongs” to prevent gambling addictive behavior, to recover their humanity, and to improve their way of life.