"Change Your Gambling. Change Your Life"

by Ryan Martin, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Health Education and Promotion, East Carolina University

During my time as the Thomas N. Cummings Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling and Division on Addictions (Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School), I was afforded the opportunity to work with mentor and friend, Howard Shaffer, on a self-help book written to facilitate behavior change among people with gambling problems. Dr. Shaffer, associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Division on Addiction, is a pioneer in the field of disordered gambling.

My co-authors (Dr. Shaffer, John Kleschinsky, & Liz Neporent) and I are proud and excited to announce that “Change your gambling – Change your life” was published this past March. In our book, we provide accessible, clinically proven strategies for individuals who are interested in changing their gambling behavior (as well as other mental health issues) on their own. 

We wrote “Change your gambling – Change your life” using a non-confrontational approach.  In our book, we attempt to motivate individuals who are ambivalent about changing their gambling (and other mental health issues) to make changes.  We provide the reader with opportunities to set goals and consider the priorities in their life.  After articulating goals, we help the reader consider the positive and negative implications of changing or not changing their behavior.  If the reader decides that the benefits of changing outweigh the barriers, we provide them with clinically proven strategies to change their gambling.  By changing their gambling, we hope other aspects of their life will improve - including finances, relationships and health.

One tenet of “Change your gambling - Change your life” is that self-help can be successful and is often the preferred treatment option for individuals with gambling problems.  Research indicates that while some people with gambling problems change via formal treatment and/or self-help groups (e.g., Gamblers Anonymous), many others change on their own.  We wrote “Change your gambling - Change your life” with those people in mind. 

In addition to the finding that many people change without formal treatment, research also indicates that individuals with gambling problems often have co-occurring mental health disorders, such as depression, anxiety, or substance abuse.  We developed “Change your gambling. Change your life” to target gambling and co-occurring problems simultaneously.  Specific chapters in the text provide self-help tools for (1) gambling and mood, (2) gambling and anxiety, (3) gambling and impulse control, and (4) gambling and substance use.

Finally, we know that relapse is common among those trying to change their behavior.  As a result, we provide strategies to avoid relapses and how to react when a “slip-up” occurs.

If you or someone you know has a gambling problem and they are contemplating changing their behavior, please consider reading and using the change strategies provided in “Change your Gambling – Change your Life”.

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