Diagnosing the pathological gambler

This paper discusses problems of making the diagnosis of pathological gambling, a new diagnosis in the 1980 edition of DSM III. Suggestions are made for taking the patient's history, evaluating it, and ruling out other diagnoses. A checklist derived from DMS III is presented to help facilitate making an accurate diagnosis.An earlier version of this paper was read at the Fourth Annual Conference on Gambling, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, 1981.