Associations between recovery capital, spirituality, and DSM–5 symptom improvement in gambling disorder.

Abstract

Understanding how factors promoting recovery from gambling disorder operate is important in gambling studies and treatment programs. The recovery experience may involve multiple positive resources and may be hindered by negative experiences or states. Most prior studies have focused on the latter, generating a gap in understanding the role for positive psychology measures in recovery from gambling disorder. This study investigated the associations between symptom improvement in gambling disorder and positive resources operationalized as recovery capital (internal and external resources that individuals may draw upon during the recovery process) and intrinsic spirituality. Negative experiences and states, including stressful life events, depression, and anxiety, were also considered. One hundred and 40 individuals (101 men) with a lifetime gambling disorder treated in 5 treatment centers in Israel were assessed on DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for gambling disorder (lifetime and past-year), Brief Assessment of Recovery Capital Scale adapted to gambling disorder, Intrinsic Spirituality Scale, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire 9 for depression, and Stressful Life Events Scale. Improvement in gambling disorder was calculated by subtracting the criteria count for the previous year from the lifetime count. Although anxiety, stressful life events, and depression were found to be negatively associated with gambling disorder symptom improvement, only recovery capital and spirituality re-Editor's Note. John M. Roll served as the action editor for this article.-TC This article was published Online First July 25, 2019.

Spiritual experiences are related to engagement of a ventral frontotemporal functional brain network: Implications for prevention and treatment of behavioral and substance addictions

“…We have found that spirituality correlates inversely with problem-gambling severity in individuals with gambling disorder at various stages of recovery (Gavriel-Fried, Moretta, & Potenza, 2019a). Furthermore, only spirituality and another positive psychology measures, recovery capital, remained significant in a model that also contained measures of anxiety, depression, and stressful life events in statistically predicting recovery from gambling disorder (Gavriel-Fried, Moretta, & Potenza, 2019b). Spirituality also appears linked to recovery from gambling disorder to a greater extent in younger as compared to older adults (Gavriel-Fried, Moretta, & Potenza, 2019c).…”

“…However, the current findings suggest that spirituality may also promote positive health psychological benefits that operate through VAN-related neural processes. The extent to which such networks may also influence other positive health psychology domains (such as those operationalized as component of recovery capital; Gavriel-Fried et al, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c and promote resiliency against and recovery from behavioral addictions warrants direct examination in future studies.…”

“…For these reasons, we believe sICA is well suited to identify brain networks associated with spiritual experiences. Given the importance of spirituality to recovery in behavioral addictions like gambling disorder (Gavriel-Fried et al, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c and the relevance of understanding neural correlates of treatment outcomes to refine interventions for behavioral addictions as has been proposed theoretically (Brand, Young, Laier, Wölfling, & Potenza, 2016Dong & Potenza, 2014) and demonstrated empirically in specific treatments , investigation of the neural correlates of spiritual experiences holds relevance for behavioral addictions.…”

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

“…As such, assessing both negative and positive resources may provide a holistic and comprehensive perspective of recovery. Such a model has recently examined the contribution of RC, spirituality, stressful life events (SLEs), depression, and anxiety to symptom improvement in 140 individuals with lifetime GD (Gavriel-Fried, Moretta, & Potenza, 2019a), of whom 67 reported no current inclusionary criteria for GD (Gavriel-Fried, Moretta, & Potenza, 2019b). Symptom improvement was negatively linked to SLEs, depression, and anxiety and positively linked to RC and intrinsic spirituality.…”

“…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.…”