Anxiety and/or Depression in the Pathogenesis of Addictive Gambling

Abstract

The Spielberger State—Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Beck Depression Inventory were administered to 75 pathological gamblers seeking behavioral treatment, to investigate the hypothesis that anxiety and depression were important determinants in the maintenance of gambling behavior. Further, subgroups of “pure” poker-machine and “pure” horse-race gamblers were isolated and compared to determine whether differences existed between groups of individuals who selected different forms of gambling. Although the desire to win money was given as the main reason for participation, need for money played a less significant role in precipitating further gambling. Rather, the concept that pathological gambling is a behavioral stress reaction received some support. As a group pathological gamblers had moderate levels of depression. State or trait anxiety scores were no different from Spielberger's normative sample of neuropsychiatric patients, but were higher than those of college students. No significant differences were found between the poker-machine and horse-race gambling subgroups on age, years gambling, years of uncontrolled gambling, state and trait anxiety, or depression. It was suggested that environmental factors are of importance in determining the form of gambling selected, but differences between these subgroups on other psychological dimensions could not be excluded on the basis of the present study.