Work

Concordance between gambling disorder, alcohol use disorder, and other behavioural addictions provides evidence for a comprehensive approach to addictive behaviours: A multiple systematic review analysis

Year: 2026

Type: review

Abstract: BACKGROUND: has opened new avenues for research. This decision was justified by the similarities in the phenomenology, psychological, neurobiological, and genetic correlates across these disorders. Through a comprehensive systematic analysis, we aimed to identify factors associated with gambling disorder and examine their involvement in candidate behavioural addictions to assess the case for reclassification. METHODS: Using gambling disorder as the gold standard, we identified 75 factors grouped into 9 categories to compare gambling disorder with alcohol use disorder (AUD) as a standard chemical addiction, gaming disorder, compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (CSBD), binge eating disorder (BED), compulsive buying-shopping disorder (CBSD), exercise addiction, and work addiction. RESULTS: Data availability, compared to gambling disorder, was 100% for AUD; however, it was limited, ranging between 48% and 69% for gaming disorder, BED, and CSBD, and remained below 23% for other behaviours. The analyses confirmed a strong similarity between gambling disorder and alcohol use disorder (92.2%) and gaming disorder (98.9%), followed by CSBD (89.7%) and BED (84.9%). All other conditions showed weaker, although still high, congruence with gambling disorder (between 67% and 74% for the unweighted concordance rates). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings reaffirm AUD, gambling, and gaming disorder as addictive disorders and provide evidence that the studied candidates could be considered as behavioural addictions, especially binge eating disorder and CSBD.

Source: European Psychiatry

DOI: 10.1192/j.eurpsy.2026.12249