ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: In our studies, we have made efforts to compare illness representation among the pathological gamblers, social gamblers, the family members of gambler, the gambling industry employees, and general adults and to investigate what kinds of illness representation make an estimate of therapy intention. METHODS: 222 gambling users, 125 family members of gambler, 95 employees in gambling industry, and 1383 general adults were included in this study. Symptom representation, negative characteristic representation, negative consequence representation, internal and external attribution representation, spontaneous recovery representation, recovery representation through therapeutic help of speciality, time lapse representation were constructed and included for illness representation of pathological gambling. RESULTS: 1) Pathological gamblers had lower symptoms, negative characteristics, negative consequences and therapeutic help seeking representation than other groups, on the other hand higher external attribution representation and spontaneous recovery representation. 2) Families of problem gambler have inconsistent characteristics higher external attribution and negative consequences and lower therapeutic help seeking representation. 3) It was founded that negative consequences representation and external representation were low in gambling industry employees. 4) The more symptom representation increased and external attribution decreased, the more therapeutic intention increased in case of problem gamblers and their families. CONCLUSION: Pathological gamblers have the lowest awareness and acceptance on mental problem caused by excessive gambling. However, suggested that family members of gambler and gambling industry employees also have partially self defensive and contradicted representations. It was suggested that awareness on severity of symptom and internal attribution representation needs to be increased in order to participate therapeutic place.