Conceptualizing gambling disorder with the process model of emotion regulation

Course overview

Nowadays, gambling disorder (GD) is a worldwide health issue and there is a growing need to both improve our understanding of this disorder and to tailor specific interventions for its treatment. Moreover, theoretical models and preliminary empirical results suggest that difficulty in regulating emotional states might be involved in GD. However, literature describing clinical and theoretical aspects of emotional dysregulation among pathological gamblers (PGs) shows a lack of systematic description. This article tries to provide, a theoretical framework of emotion regulation (ER) processing and empirical evidence supporting a conceptual model of GD as an ER affliction.