Study Demonstrates Success at Treating Gambling Addiction With Telehealth Care
Credit: Department of Defense
A study of more than 1,300 adults receiving telehealth treatment for gambling disorders demonstrated a high rate of “clinically meaningful improvement” in only around two weeks.
Birches Health, an Arizona-based clinic specializing in treating various behavioral addictions, published the study. It touted it as “the largest real-world clinical dataset on virtual gambling disorder treatment in the United States” in a press release. Birches emphasized the need for specially trained mental health professionals in treating gambling disorders.
“Gambling disorder has been treated as an afterthought in the U.S. healthcare system for decades,” Birches CEO Elliott Rapaport said in the release. “People lose their savings, their families, their jobs, sometimes their lives, and the most common clinical response is still a referral to a generalist therapist who has never treated the condition. This study is peer-reviewed evidence that a different model exists and that it works.”
It’s worth noting that the model touted is one offered by Birches Health. And one of the researchers is employed by Birches, though the study is careful to note that it was peer-reviewed, and no compensation was contingent on the outcome of the study.
Still, as the U.S. grapples with the consequences of expanded legal gambling, including addiction issues, getting clinically significant positive results with a low-cost treatment option is a result worth touting.
Nearly Three-Quarters of Patients Experienced Reduced Harm
The researchers examined 1,305 cases of gambling disorders. In each case, the individual had received telehealth (online) treatment through Birches Health during a span from June 2024 through April 2026. The sample was predominantly male (65%), with an average age of 41.5.
Researchers used the Gambling Symptom Assessment Scale (G-SAS) to measure the severity of harms. They found that 71.7% of the sample achieved a “clinically meaningful” reduction in symptoms. They defined clinically meaningful as four points or greater on the scale, which ranges from zero to 48. The estimated average improvement was 8.3 points.
The median time to achieve that improvement was only 14 days. That suggests that well-trained therapists can effect fairly rapid positive change in those with gambling disorders. What’s more, almost half of the sample (47.7%) sustained improvement on a consecutive assessment.
What makes the findings even more impressive is that more than half of the sample (56%) had “psychiatric comorbidities” such as anxiety disorder, depression, etc.
Behavioral Treatments Are the Future of Harm Reduction
It’s important to remember that this study is backward-facing. That is, it didn’t start with a hypothesis and test against a control group. Rather, it examined a group of real-life patients who received virtual therapy of their own volition.
That has pros and cons. On the one hand, it tested gambling disorder treatment on a significant sample of real patients and examined the efficacy of that treatment. However, the study also focused only on the treatments from one provider. It’s hard to say whether these numbers would translate to other treatment systems.
Testing the treatment against control groups would also provide valuable insight into how effective the online therapy is compared to other options.
Still, treating problem gambling at the behavioral level could prove incredibly valuable for several reasons.
For one, virtual therapy is an accessible and low-cost option. Birches Health says it typically charges less than $25 per session. Even more expensive virtual therapy options are often $100 or less out of pocket.
Perhaps just as key, therapy aims to treat the root cause of the behavior rather than simply closing off avenues for gambling. For instance, programs like Gamban, which partnered with Michigan, and other self-exclusion options can only do so much to stop a person from gambling. A determined individual can always find another betting outlet. That’s especially true in a world with ever more gambling-like options, from prediction markets to “skill game” kiosks.
Major hurdles remain in treating gambling disorder. Chiefly, only an eye-opening 20% of affected individuals even seek help, according to one of the studies cited by the researchers. But if those who do seek it find meaningful help at this rate, that will be a major step in the right direction.
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