Psychodiagnostic Assessment of Pathological Gamblers: A Focus on Personality Disorders, Clinical Syndromes and Alexithymia

2015

Comorbid psychopathological syndromes are common in pathological gamblers (PGs), but the contribution of alexithymia, as a disorder of affect regulation, has not been fully explored yet. This study sought to examine the association between personality disorders, clinical syndromes and alexithymia levels in a group of PGs and to highlight a relationship between gambling behaviour and alexithymia scores, apart from the relationship between other disorders and gambling behaviour. Psychological assessment included the South Oaks Gambling Screen, Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III) and Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) performed on 70 treatment seeking PGs and 70 healthy controls. S…