The crucial role of recovery capital in individuals with a gambling disorder

Abstract

Background and aimsThe concept of recovery capital (RC) describes the internal and external resources that individuals draw upon to initiate and sustain the processes of addiction recovery. This concept has been primarily applied to individuals recovering from substance addictions. In this study, the RC concept was applied to individuals with a gambling disorder (GD) to test its associations with the diagnosis and severity of GD and with levels of psychopathology as manifested in depression and anxiety.MethodsA sample of 140 individuals who recovered or did not recover from a GD was drawn from lists of former and currently treated individuals in five gambling treatment centers in Israel. The DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for GD, Assessment of Recovery Capital and Brief Assessment of Recovery Capital Scales adapted to Gambling, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale, and the Patient Health Questionnaire 9 which measures depression were used.ResultsRC clearly distinguishes between individuals who have recovered from GD and those who have not. A structural equation model showed significant negative associations between RC and GD severity, depression, and generalized anxiety. The associations between GD severity and depression and anxiety were not significant. However, when omitting the path between RC and depression/anxiety, the associations between GD and depression/anxiety became significant.ConclusionsRC plays an important role in GD severity and diagnosis, as well as in psychopathology. This study extends the concept of RC to the area of gambling and contributes to the growing body of studies that have found parallels and common denominators between substance addiction and behavioral addictions.

Similar roles for recovery capital but not stress in women and men recovering from gambling disorder

“…For the purposes of this study, three changes were made: (a) items related to substance use were rephrased to gambling, (b) individuals were asked to relate to the past year rather than the time they completed the scale, and (c) the 6-point scale was converted into 5-point scale ranging from "do not agree at all" (1) to "strongly agree" (5). After omitting two items with low loadings, the scale showed good fit indices and a reliability of α = .75 (Gavriel-Fried, 2018). Higher scores represented higher RC.…”

“…Brief Assessment of Recovery Capital (BARC). The BARC (Vilsaint et al, 2017) is a 10-item abridged version of the Assessment of Recovery Capital (ARC) Scale (Groshkova, Best, & White, 2013) that has been used on this sample (Gavriel-Fried, 2018;Gavriel-Fried et al, 2019a). Each item queries one conceptual domain of RC (e.g., social support, recovery experience, coping and life functioning, and global physical health).…”

“…Data were obtained from a research project on the role of RC in GD (Gavriel-Fried, 2018;Gavriel-Fried & Lev-El, 2018;Gavriel-Fried et al, 2019a, 2019b. This research project aimed to apply the concept of RC to GD and, among other things, to explore whether this concept can differentiate between recovered and non-recovered individuals with GD.…”

“…RC encompasses multiple internal and external resources (human, social, cultural, community, financial, and spiritual) that may be available to people and used throughout recovery (Cloud & Granfield, 2008;Laudet & White, 2008). RC has been negatively linked to GD severity, substance-addiction severity, and recovery stages (Burns & Marks, 2013;Gavriel-Fried, 2018;Laudet & White, 2008).…”

“…The current cross-sectional study aimed to extend previous findings by examining gender relationships using the same sample as described previously (Gavriel-Fried, 2018;Gavriel-Fried et al, 2019a, 2019b. We hypothesized that (a) all potential predictor variables would be associated with GD symptom improvement in both men and women (RC and spirituality positively, and depression, anxiety, and SLEs negetively); (b) the positive association between RC and symptom improvement would be similar for women and men; (c) the positive association between spirituality and symptom improvement would be stronger for women than for men; and (d) the negative associations between SLEs, depression, anxiety, and symptom improvement would be stronger in women than in men.…”