The Context of Gambling Treatment: Towards Creating an Online Service to Reduce Problem Gambling - Part Five

Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Problem Gambling

Treatments: Other: Online therapy

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05084885

074-2018

Details and patient eligibility

About

This application involves a multi-stage study with the ultimate goal of developing an online treatment service for problem gamblers. We will recruit up to 100 problem gamblers, and offer problem gambling treatment services to them entirely over the internet. The program will be evaluated based on uptake, experience of the participants, and pre-test vs post-test differences in gambling and well-being.

Full description

Disordered gambling is now recognized as a behavioral addiction. Although the physical consequences of the disorder are very mild, the financial and emotional costs can be enormous. This application involves a multi-stage study with the ultimate goal of developing an online treatment service for problem gamblers. This project was originally designed to take place over a three-year period but has been condensed into two. Part one was scoping review. Part two involved focus groups with service providers and people experiencing gambling problems. Part three will gather some general population information on two on going population survey's run by our research team. Part four Involved key informant interviews, and part five would be the development and evaluation of a pilot online treatment service. This application deals with part five of the overall project, Parts two and four were conducted as 025-2017. In this study, we will recruit up to 100 problem gamblers, and offer problem gambling treatment services to them entirely over the internet. The program will be evaluated based on uptake, experience of the participants, and pre-test vs post-test differences in gambling and well-being. The data reported here are related to part 5 only. Due to funding cuts, we were only able to include 2 people in the completed study.

Enrollment: 16 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• problem gamblers seeking treatment who are 18 years and older must be willing to have therapy conducted online must have access to a computer and Internet be able to communicate in English.

Exclusion criteria

• not able to communicate in English, has current suicidal ideation, acute psychotic symptoms, current involvement in other gambling treatment, has severe substance abuse problem or complex mental health problems (as assessed by screening tools)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

16 participants in 2 patient groups

Online treatment

Experimental group

Description:

The participants will receive counseling over the internet.

Treatment:

Other: Online therapy

Non-treatment

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants who did not participant in the group were asked to complete the 12ve month followup questionnaire (but not the post treatment questionnaire).