“…Stress has been defined (Lazarus, 1996) as an event that, “occurs when an individual perceives that the demands of an external situation are beyond his or her perceived ability to cope with them.” Recently Blaszczynski and Nower (2017) validated a new etiological instrument to assess people with gambling problems, in which stress-coping and childhood maltreatment variables represent two important factors that assist in identifying different subgroups of individuals with pathological gambling, highlighting the importance that stress could have in the pathophysiology of the disorder. The association of stressful life events with psychiatric disorders has been widely studied, especially for depressive disorders (Tao et al, 2011; Anders et al, 2012; Rueda and Valls, 2016). Moreover, stress is a well-known factor that contributes to the development, maintenance and relapse of several externalizing disorders, including in addictions the use of alcohol (King et al, 2003; Dawson et al, 2005; Keyes et al, 2012; Young-Wolff et al, 2012) and drugs (Blanco et al, 2014; Myers et al, 2014).…”