Barriers to requests for professional help from spouses of pathological gamblers
Although the spouses of pathological gamblers experience many consequences due to their partner’s gambling problem, they are only few who uses family support services. The goal of this project is to document what keeps the spouses/partners from asking for support in order to possibly reduce the impact of those barriers and encourage requests for help. The project was carried out using semi-structured interviews with nine spouses of gamblers in treatment at two addiction rehabilitation centers in Quebec. All participants (N = 2 men and 7 women) were in a relationship with the gambler for 2 to 33 years at the time of the interview (M = 13.7 years; SD = 25.8) and their age varied from 28 to 60 years (M = 43.8 years; SD = 25.3). The interview transcripts were analyzed using N’Vivo software and a thematic analysis following the steps put forward by Braun and Clarke (2006) was conducted. The results indicate that the spouses of gamblers in treatment encounter several different barriers that hold back their request for help: the elements related to the context of the help request (eg.: inability to miss work), the elements related to environmental and social factors (eg: schedule of meetings), the elements related to the specific request (eg.: inability to trust) and finally, the barriers related to the attitudes, thoughts and personal characteristics of the spouses/partners (eg: desire to respect the gambler). Possible ways to favor access and limit the impact of the aforementioned barriers are presented. These concern both the organization of services (eg: meeting schedule) as well as actions to make the services better known to people who could benefit from them.