Psychological treatment of slot-machine pathological gambling: a case study

In this paper the treatment with stimulus control, exposure and relapse prevention of a patient affected by pathological gambling is described. The patient, a 47-years-old woman, was suffering from this disorder for five years. The treatment consisted of nine individual sessions (five sessions of stimulus control and exposure and four sessions of relapse prevention) in a period of ten weeks. At the end of 1-year follow-up, the patient was much improved, without gambling behavior nor associated symptoms, as well as with a greater overall adaptation. The implications of this case for clinical research and practice are discussed.