The Role of Metacognition in Pathological Gambling: A Mediation Model

Abstract

Pathological gambling involves multitudinous costs related to financial, legal, and public health care aspects, as well as to specific psychological disorders. Despite the overall evidence suggesting that comorbid disorders represent a risk factor for pathological gambling, there is scant evidence on the appropriate treatments for gamblers with such disorders. In this context, metacognitive therapy is an interesting approach because it considers psychological disorders as a result of the activation of perseverative cognitive processes and attentional strategies in response to inner events. Several studies report that metacognition is associated with different psychological problems. This study investigated the relationship among comorbid disorders, metacognition, and pathological gambling. 69 pathological gamblers at the first hospital admission and 58 controls drawn from general population (matched for age, gender, education) completed a battery of self report instruments: Symptom Checklist-90-R, Metacognition Questionnaire 30, South Oaks Gambling Scale. Compared to controls, pathological gamblers showed higher level of comorbid symptomatology and metacognition. Correlation analyses showed that: comorbid symptomatology and metacognition were positively and significantly correlated with pathological gambling; metacognition was positively and significantly associated with comorbid symptomatology. Mediation analysis indicated that dysfunctional metacognitive strategies could have an indirect effect on pathological gambling mediated by concurrent psychological disorders. These findings provide some implications for gambling treatment programs: pathological gamblers should be screened for psychiatric disorders, and metacognitive therapy could be considered a correct treatment of pathological gamblers. Metacognitive therapy might lead to the reduction of the pathological gambling by the diminishing of the concurrent psychological disorders.

Conceptualizing gambling disorder with the process model of emotion regulation

“…Interestingly, mindfulness is negatively related to GD severity ( Lakey, Campbell, Brown, & Goodie, 2007 ; Reid, Di Tirro, & Fong, 2014 ; Riley, 2012 ), suggesting that PGs may have a deficit in the ability to accept emotional states in a non-judgmental way. In addition, studies on metacognition capacities among PGs provided preliminary evidence that GD severity may be related to positive beliefs toward the need to control thoughts ( Jauregui, Urbiola, & Estevez, 2016 ; Lindberg, Fernie, & Spada, 2011 ; Mansueto et al., 2016 ; Spada & Roarty, 2015 ). PGs often believe that certain types of thoughts have to be suppressed, and this has been demonstrated by Riley ( 2012 ), which reported high levels of thought suppression among PGs.…”

“…Again, research on metacognitions among PGs brought interesting results. Some studies indicate that PGs have high levels of positive beliefs toward the use of perseverative thinking ( Jauregui, Urbiola, et al., 2016 ; Mansueto et al., 2016 ; Spada & Roarty, 2015 ). More closely related to the addictive behavior, it seems that, as previously discussed for alcohol drinking ( Cooper, Frone, Russell, & Mudar, 1995 ; Garofalo & Velotti, 2015 ), PGs have high expectancies toward the efficiency of gambling as a regulatory strategy.…”

Attachment and problematic Facebook use in adolescents: The mediating role of metacognitions

“…Second, it has been demonstrated that metacognitions are involved in several problematic behaviors, including traditional addictive behaviors (e.g., problem drinking and smoking), established behavioral addictions (i.e., gambling), and potential behavioral addiction such as PIU and problematic gaming (Mansueto et al, 2016;Spada & Caselli, 2017;Spada, Caselli, & Wells, 2009;Spada, Nikčević, Moneta, & Wells, 2007). Therefore, we want to test whether metacognitions are directly linked to PFU in adolescents:…”

Impulsividad y conciencia del problema predicen la adherencia terapéutica y el abandono del tratamiento en el trastorno por juego de azar

“…De hecho, algunos autores han propuesto que los factores motivacionales sesgan las cogniciones sobre el juego, como predicen los modelos de razonamiento motivado (Navas et al, 2016). Por tanto, la conciencia de problemas podría ser sensible a estrategias de entrenamiento en habilidades metacognitivas (Mansueto et al, 2016).…”