Brazil: Sao Paulo launches specialized gambling addiction treatment program
Psychosocial Care Centers will have dedicated teams as national treatment requests rise.
Key Points
- São Paulo created a program to treat gambling addiction at Caps with specialized staff and therapy
- Gambling treatment requests at Caps rose 206% from 2021 to 2024, leading to new research
- Federal Court of Accounts report found gaps in care coordination and monitoring, despite Brazil’s mental health budget rising from BR1.6bn to BR2.2bn
The state of São Paulo, Brazil, announced the creation of a program aimed at addressing gambling addiction within the state’s Psychosocial Care Centers (Caps) through specialized treatment services.
Governor Tarcísio de Freitas signed legislation creating the ‘State Program for Awareness and Treatment of Harm from Online Betting Games and Physical Casinos.’
According to the regulation, the Caps will establish teams equipped to handle addiction cases, including psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers. It also provides group therapy and partnerships with universities, specialized entities and civil society organizations to expand support networks.
This comes after data from Brazil’s Ministry of Health emerged showing gambling addiction treatment requests at Caps increased from 413 cases in 2021 to 1,265 cases in 2024, representing a 206% rise.
In addition, Brazil’s Ministry of Finance Secretariat for Prizes and Betting reported that 17.7 million Brazilians took part in fixed-odds betting in the first half of 2025.
Minister Alexandre Padilha said that the Ministry of Health is “commissioning research to understand better the impact” of gambling on Brazilians’ mental health and on the public health system.
He added, “We have a new challenge in health, which is the problem of gambling addiction, and it is already affecting Brazilians’ health. We have seen more people going to the CAPS centers and disclosing this issue, and I believe the vast majority do not even disclose it.”
Good to know: Brazil’s mental health budget rose from BR1.6bn ($291m) in 2022 to BR2.2bn in 2024
A May report from Brazil’s Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) highlighted shortcomings in the Psychosocial Care Network, such as a lack of specialized staff and treatment space. It also pointed to poor coordination, missing indicators to track gambling addiction and few awareness campaigns on its risks.
The TCU report stated, “There are problems in the coordination among the responsible areas, a lack of specific indicators to monitor the issue and few awareness campaigns about the risks of addiction. In addition, the number of cases recorded as pathological gambling may be underestimated, and actions to detect dependency cases early are limited.”
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