Il disturbo da gioco d’azzardo: la dipendenza patologica come patologia della relazione

Gambling disorder is placed in DSM-5 among addictive disorders in the subsection of “non-substance-related disorders”, defining it as «persistent and recurrent problematic gambling behavior leading to clinically significant impairment or distress, in a 12-month period» (APA, 2013). The aim of this paper, through a review of the literature and a description of a clinical case, is to highlight the relational aspect of the GAP disorder by describing different forms of “relationship pathology” among its main effects. National and international literature highlights how the gambling represents a traumatic family experience, that involves all the systems of the player life with both human and social costs; in particular, gambling becames part of the dynam- ics between the couple and of the parent-child bond, assuming particular config- urations and meanings for both symbolic and relational point of view. The presence of pathological mechanisms in the couple relationship hidden by an apparent complicity that actually underlies a co-dependent relation between the partners, constitutes a first aspect that reinforces the pathological gaming. The present paper focuses attention on couple therapy, in a systemic per- spective, to overcome the concept of the gambling as an “individual intrapsy- chic phenomenon” and to identify the factors that may co-occur the onset and maintenance of pathological behavior.