Self-Labelling, Causal Attributions and Perceived Stigma in People Negatively Affected by Gambling

This study examined self-labelling, stigma and causal attributions in a sample of 300 people who had currently, or previously experienced, substantial gambling-related problems. Specific aims were to compare people’s use of more clinical labels with public health labels relating to gambling harm and to examine whether stigma was stronger in people who made more internal attributions and who adopted clinical labels. The results showed that people rarely adopted public health terminology relating to gambling harm either in self-description or when referring themselves to others. Clinical terms (addicted, problem, compulsive) were commonly endorsed as self-labels, but only ‘addicted’ was commonly used when referring to themselves to others. Stigma and clinical labelling were stronger when people had more severe gambling problems, but stigma did not independently predict clinical label use and was lower if people made more internal attributions (i.e., gambling caused by their own actions). The findings support the importance of individual preferences and the careful use of appropriate language in public contexts to reduce stigma, but question whether the current emphasis on harm-related labels and the preoccupation in some papers with some clinical labels for gambling disorder may be misplaced.