Gambling Disorder: 4 Truths from a Groundbreaking New Study

When you picture someone with a gambling disorder, a specific image might come to mind. But what if that stereotype is outdated and dangerously incomplete?

A groundbreaking new study from an innovative program in Madrid called ‘Adcom’ reveals that the digital age is forging a new, more complex, and more hidden type of gambling addict. This research, based on hundreds of individuals who sought help voluntarily. And it challenges our most common assumptions about who is affected and why. 

This article shares the most impactful and counter-intuitive findings from this research.

Prepare to see what gambling addiction really looks like today.

1. It’s Rarely Just About Gambling: The Hidden Mental Health Crisis

One of the study’s most critical findings is the extremely high rate at which Gambling Disorder co-occurs with other serious mental health conditions.

This situation, known as “Gambling Dual Disorder (GDD),” suggests that gambling is not an isolated issue. It’s a symptom of a much larger mental health struggle. 

Among the participants who self-referred for a gambling problem, the numbers were stark: 

• 57.4% showed evidence of other psychopathological symptoms. 
• 64.9% experienced significant symptoms of depression.
• 51.3% were at risk for an anxiety disorder.
• 37.4% screened positive for ADHD.

This reframes gambling not as a simple lack of willpower, but as a complex disorder deeply intertwined with a person’s overall mental well-being. To be effective, treatment cannot just focus on the gambling; it must address these co-occurring conditions as well. 

Gambling Disorder can be defined as “persistent and recurrent problematic gambling that leads to significant impairment or distress”.

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2. The Digital Divide: Online and Offline People with Gambling Disorder Are Strikingly Different People

This complex mental health picture becomes even more fragmented when we look at where the gambling happens. A divide that is creating two entirely different profiles of addiction.

The study revealed significant and clear differences between online gambling versus those who struggled with offline gambling. The most compelling demographic contrasts paint a clear picture: 

• Age: The average online gambler was 30.6 years old, a full generation younger than the average offline gambler at 43.4 years old.
• Gender: While men were the majority in both groups, the disparity was much greater online. Only 5.3% of online gamblers were female, compared to 20.5% of offline gamblers.
• Prior Treatment: Individuals with offline gambling problems were far more likely to have previously sought help for a mental health issue (62.1%) than those with online problems (42.9%). 

These differences are profound.

Technology has fractured the landscape of addiction. It’s created a younger, more isolated cohort that is harder to reach.

The fact that this online group has had significantly less prior contact with mental health services suggests a new, underserved population. A population that may not be captured by traditional outreach and may be less aware of their own underlying conditions.

More About Gambling Disorder

• Gambling Disorder: 4 Truths from a Groundbreaking New Study

  New Adcom study reveals gambling disorder today: high mental-health overlap, online/offline differences, compulsive buying link, and key predictors.

  January 20, 2026

• 5 Hidden Ways the Gambling Industry Engineers Harm

  A health lens reveals how the gambling industry engineers harm: blame-shifting “responsible gambling,” addictive design, and policy capture fueling crisis.

  January 6, 2026

• Holiday Gambling: Why You Bet Matters More Than How Much

  Are you planning to do a little gambling this holiday on a football game? Why you bet is more important than how much, according to this new study.

  December 23, 2025

3. A Shocking Connection: Gambling Disorder and Compulsive Buying Go Hand-in-Hand

Perhaps the single most surprising finding was the powerful link between Gambling Disorder and another behavioral addiction: compulsive buying.

The study found that compulsive buying was a potential problem in an astonishing 85.2% of participants. 

Breaking this down even further, for 57.7% of the entire group, the existence of a compulsive buying problem was considered “very probable/sure.” 

This is highly counter-intuitive.

While both behaviors involve money, they are often viewed as completely separate issues. This powerful correlation is not just a quirky finding. It’s evidence that Gambling Disorder may be part of a broader spectrum of impulse-control disorders rooted in similar neurological pathways. It highlights a shared underlying mechanism related to the brain’s reward system and the cycle of financial distress and emotional coping.

4. Your Background and Other Vices Can Predict How You Gamble

The study went beyond simple descriptions to identify factors that could predict whether a person was more likely to struggle with online versus offline gambling. This analysis revealed a complex interplay of cultural factors, lifestyle, and co-occurring disorders that shape a person’s specific addictive behaviors. 

The research identified several key predictors: 

• Being born in Spain increased the odds of having an online gambling problem by more than five times.
• Excessive Internet use nearly tripled the odds of having an online gambling problem.
• Conversely, having a co-occurring alcohol addiction or an eating disorder significantly reduced the odds of having an online problem, making it far more likely the gambling problem was offline.

These points reveal that the specific form an addiction takes is not random. It is shaped by a combination of a person’s environment, other behaviors, and personal history.

Conclusion: A New Call for Awareness of Gambling Disorder

The message from this research is clear: the digital age has forged a new profile of gambling addiction that is younger, more hidden, and more complex. The old stereotypes simply don’t fit the modern reality. 

Innovative programs like Adcom, which lower the barriers to seeking help, are not only crucial for providing treatment but also for gathering the vital data needed to truly understand the problem. This new knowledge allows for better prevention, more targeted interventions, and a more compassionate public understanding of a deeply challenging disorder. 

Knowing that online addiction strikes a younger group with less mental health history, how must we radically change our outreach to find and help this hidden population before it’s too late?

How do you view gambling disorder after reading this article? Let us know in the comments!

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5 Hidden Ways the Gambling Industry Engineers Harm

Introduction: The Illusion of Choice

For many, gambling is seen as a form of entertainment, a voluntary activity where personal responsibility is paramount. We’re told to gamble responsibly. But, if things go wrong, the blame is often placed on the individual’s lack of self-control. 

But what if that entire narrative is a dangerous fiction?

A new public health study reveals gambling harm is not an unfortunate side effect of a few people’s poor choices. Instead, it is the calculated outcome of a powerful and deliberate “gambling ecosystem” designed to maximize profit at a severe human cost.

This system operates using tactics that public health experts call the “commercial determinants of health.” The same strategies used by the tobacco and fossil fuel to drive profit by undermining public wellbeing. 

This post will reveal five of the most impactful insights from the study, exposing the hidden truths of an industry that has mastered the art of engineering harm.

1. The “Responsible Gambling” Slogan is Designed to Blame YOU

The familiar phrase “gamble responsibly” is not a genuine public health message but a strategic discourse meticulously promoted by the industry. The primary function of this narrative is to shift the focus, and the blame, onto the individual consumer.

By framing harm as a personal failing, it deflects attention. It deflects it from:

• Predatory industry practices
• Unsafe products
• A system that profits from addiction

This blame-shifting has severe consequences, creating a culture of shame that prevents people from seeking help and isolates them when they are most vulnerable. As the study’s authors note: 

This emphasis on individual responsibility diverts attention from the practices of the industry. It generates stigma and shame for those harmed. It downplays serious harms caused by gambling. Worst of all: it contributes to the suicide toll. 

This psychological framing is so damaging because it convinces individuals that their suffering is their own fault, making it harder to recognize the external forces at play and seek the support they need. 

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2. The Gambling Industry’s Goal is For You to “Play to Extinction”

Behind the glamorous advertising and messages of entertainment lies a stark and chilling internal objective. The study highlights a term used by gambling industry representatives to describe their core aim: “playing to extinction.” 

This isn’t an exaggeration; it’s the industry’s own vocabulary for its business model:

“…gambling industry representatives describe their aim is to maximise revenue per available customer (revpac), and encourage ‘playing to extinction’, the point at which a customer has exhausted all available funds.”

The phrase has a chilling double meaning.

It refers to the financial extinction of a customer’s funds, but in the context of gambling-related suicide, it acquires a much darker significance.

The industry’s profit model depends on pushing customers into the exact states of financial ruin and profound despair that are known precursors to suicide. It is a business model that treats human crisis as a key performance indicator. Rather than a tragic crisis.

3. Products are Engineered to Undermine Your Control

Modern gambling products, especially digital ones, are not simple games of chance. They have been intentionally intensified with features like:

• Increased speed
• High complexity
• “Frictionless” transactions

All designed to encourage extended use and bypass a person’s executive function. 

The industry also employs digital tactics like sludging. Deliberately designing interactions to make it difficult for customers to act in their own best interest. Such as withdrawing funds or closing an account. This tactic also manifests physically. For 15 years, the Australian industry has resisted modern, universal pre-commitment systems that allow users to set binding loss limits. Instead, it has relied on a form of physical sludging: “manual, paper-based self-exclusion” that requires a person to fill out separate forms for every single venue they wish to avoid. 

Product design also deploys psychological tricks to encourage overspending.

The study points out that a single ticket in the Australian “Powerball” lottery can be priced as high as AUD$46,249.65. This serves as a psychological anchor. While few would buy it, its existence makes spending smaller—yet still exorbitant—amounts like hundreds or thousands of dollars seem reasonable by comparison.

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4. “Good Causes” are Used as a Smokescreen

A common defense of the gambling industry is that it funds worthy causes, from sports teams to community charities. The research argues this is a calculated strategy to create an “‘alibi’ to legitimise gambling operations” and procure a “social license” to operate. 

This linkage creates a “symbiotic, reflexive relationship” where community groups become financially captured. Reliant on gambling revenue, these beneficiaries become powerful allies in resisting reforms that could threaten their funding, even if those reforms would reduce harm. This insidious dependency creates a powerful barrier to reform. 

As one researcher observed, the dynamic is inescapable: 

… at first the lottery was primarily dependent on the good cause and then, gradually, the good cause became increasingly dependent on the lottery. 

5. The Gambling Industry Distorts Science and Influences Policy

Like the tobacco and fossil fuel industries before it, the gambling ecosystem actively works to control and distort the scientific evidence base to protect its interests. The study identifies two key tactics: 

• Funding “safe” research: The industry funds and promotes research focused on the individual, such as the influential “pathways model.” This model frames gambling harm as an artifact of pre-existing conditions like “antisocial personality disorder,” thereby shifting blame from the addictive product to the flawed consumer. 
• Discrediting effective solutions: The ecosystem publicly casts doubt on proven harm-prevention tools. The paper cites an industry-linked researcher who claimed that universal pre-commitment systems might have a “detrimental effect and may aggravate the problem.” Crucially, the study notes that a subsequent review of the evidence cited for this claim found “no support for this conclusion,” noting the studies had significant “methodological limitations.” This reveals a pattern of distorting weak evidence to undermine effective public health measures. 

This distortion of science is coupled with political donations and the “revolving door”—where politicians and staff take industry jobs after leaving office—to block or delay meaningful reforms that could save lives.

Conclusion: Shifting from Individual Blame to Systemic Accountability

The evidence is clear: gambling harm is not a simple story of poor individual choices. It is the predictable and profitable result of a commercial system meticulously designed to addict users, shift blame, and protect its revenue streams at all costs. From manipulative product design to the distortion of science, the gambling ecosystem functions as a commercial determinant of health, actively generating and sustaining harm. 

This reframing moves the problem from one of personal responsibility to one of systemic accountability. Seeing the deliberate system that drives these harms, what does real responsibility—from our governments, communities, and the industry itself—truly look like?

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no, really.

https://x.com/binance/status/1996158210768568420

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Beyond Willpower in Addiction: 4 Powerful Lessons

We often think of addiction as a private, grueling battle of willpower.

Whether it’s a dependency on a substance, a behavior like gambling, or even an unhealthy pattern in a relationship, the prevailing narrative suggests that breaking free is a matter of pure, individual strength.

If you just try hard enough, you can overcome it. If you fail, it’s a personal failing. 

But what if this framework is fundamentally flawed? A recent, year-long study offers a more structured, hopeful, and evidence-based path to recovery.

Researchers applied a specific form of therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), to individuals struggling with a range of addictions and discovered that the right tools can do more than just help people cope; they can fundamentally transform their lives.

It’s about building a life so full and satisfying that the addiction no longer has room to thrive.

This year-long study is particularly significant because it was conducted in Kazakhstan, a region where evidence-based psychotherapy is still emerging and social stigma can be a major barrier to recovery. 

This article distills the four most impactful takeaways from this groundbreaking research. It reveals how a systematic therapeutic approach can lead to profound, measurable life changes, challenging the myth that recovery is simply a matter of gritting your teeth and pushing through. 

Lesson 1: The Change to Isn’t Small, It’s Transformative

While we might expect therapy to offer some benefit, the sheer magnitude of improvement seen in this study was extraordinary.

Participants who received Cognitive Behavioral Therapy didn’t just get slightly better; they experienced a dramatic and measurable enhancement in their overall well-being. 

The study used the World Health Organization’s Quality of Life scale (WHOQOL-BREF), which measures well-being across four key areas. The results were staggering.

On average, the experimental groups saw their quality of life scores jump from the low 40s to the mid-70s on a 100-point scale. To put that in concrete terms, participants with alcohol use disorder went from an average score of 42.31 before therapy to 74.47 after one year.

This isn’t just a number on a chart; it represents a profound shift from a life constrained by addiction to one filled with new possibilities and well-being. 

Meanwhile, the control groups, those who did not receive CBT, saw no meaningful improvement in their quality of life, with their average scores remaining essentially unchanged.

This powerful contrast repositions recovery as a genuine opportunity to build a measurably better and more satisfying life.

It’s about building a life so full and satisfying that the addiction no longer has room to thrive. 

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Beyond Willpower Lesson 2: The Same Tools Can Fix Different Problems

One of the most compelling aspects of the study was its breadth.

Researchers applied the same core therapeutic model, CBT, to four very different challenges:

• Alcohol use disorder
• Drug addiction
• Gambling disorder
• Codependency

The key finding was that CBT was highly effective across the board. 

For every single group that received therapy, there was a statistically significant reduction in the severity of their addiction. The data paints a clear picture of this versatility: 

• For drug addiction, the experimental group’s average severity score dropped from 7.96 (signifying harmful use) down to 3.14 (representing low-risk or minimal use). 
• For gambling disorder, the average severity score plummeted from a “severe” 39.55 to a “mild or moderate” 14.36. 

This suggests that no matter the substance or behavior, the underlying challenge is often the same: learning to recognize triggers, challenge automatic negative thoughts, and develop new, healthier coping strategies.

CBT provides a toolkit for rewiring these exact processes, effectively helping people move from a place of denial or ambivalence into decisive action and long-term maintenance. 

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Lesson 3: Codependency Isn’t Just a “Relationship Problem.” It’s Treatable.

The study took the significant step of including codependency, an excessive emotional or psychological dependence on a partner, often linked to that partner’s addiction, alongside clinical addictions. While codependency is not formally classified as a standalone diagnosis in major manuals like the DSM-5-TR, the researchers recognized it as a clinically significant phenomenon that is actively addressed in rehabilitation. 

The results were a powerful validation of this approach.

The experimental group for codependency saw their average severity scores drop from a “high level” of 69.12 to a “moderate or low level” of 31.44. The control group, in stark contrast, showed no significant change.

For anyone who has felt trapped in a dynamic of supporting someone else’s addiction at the expense of their own well-being, this finding is a beacon of hope. 

This is a crucial takeaway.

It frames the struggle of codependency not as a character flaw or an intractable relationship dynamic, but as a treatable condition. It offers empowerment and a clear path toward building greater independence, self-esteem, and healthier relationship dynamics. 

Beyond Willpower Lesson 4: Recovery Isn’t Just Stopping, It’s a Total Life Upgrade

The study’s design was brilliant in its simplicity: it measured success in two ways. It tracked the reduction of the negative (addiction severity) and the increase of the positive (overall quality of life). The results showed that these two things are deeply intertwined. 

The “quality of life” assessment wasn’t a vague feeling of happiness; it was a concrete evaluation of four essential domains of life: 

• Physical Health: Including energy and fatigue, quality of sleep, and even physical mobility. 
• Psychological Health: Covering everything from positive feelings and self-esteem to the ability to concentrate and learn new things. 
• Social Relationships: Examining the quality of personal relationships, the strength of social support networks, and even sexual activity. 
• Environment: Looking at practical, real-world factors like financial security, physical safety, the comfort of one’s home, and access to healthcare. 

The participants who underwent CBT saw significant improvements across all of these areas. This demonstrates that effective treatment doesn’t just happen in a therapist’s office. It radiates outward, improving every facet of a person’s existence.

True recovery, as this study shows, is about building a life that is so robust and fulfilling that the old addictive behaviors no longer hold the same power or appeal. 

Conclusion: A New Framework for Change

The findings from this study in Kazakhstan provide a powerful, evidence-based roadmap for recovery that moves far beyond the limited concept of willpower.

It shows that addiction, in its many forms, is not a moral failing but a condition that responds remarkably well to structured, compassionate, and science-backed intervention. 

By focusing on cognitive and behavioral strategies, individuals can achieve not just abstinence, but a transformative and holistic improvement in their lives. The tools exist, the evidence is clear, and the potential for change is immense.

This research leaves us with a vital question to consider: 

If we can treat these complex issues so effectively, what does that change about how we should approach mental health and personal growth in our own lives? 

Are you a professional looking to stay up-to-date with the latest information on, sex addiction, trauma, and mental health news and research? Or maybe you’re looking for continuing education courses? Then you should stay up-to-date with all of Dr. Jen’s work through her practice’s newsletter!

Do you feel your sexual behavior, or that of someone you love, is out of control? Then you should consult with a professional.

Are you looking for more reputable data-backed information on sexual addiction? The Mitigation Aide Research Archive is an excellent source for executive summaries of research studies.

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