Medical approaches to gambling issues--II: The medical response.

Gambling behaviors cover a spectrum from an enjoyable benign form of social entertainment to a disabling and potentially lethal medical condition. A companion paper, Medical Approaches to Gambling Issues--I: The Medical Condition, provides a literature review of gambling in its pathological and nonpathological forms. Physicians encounter patients who gamble, patients who have a treatable disorder of pathological gambling and family members of problem and pathological gamblers. This paper is intended to aid practicing physicians in their care of their patients who gamble and experience problems related to gambling, as well as in the care of those among their patient caseload who are symptomatically affected by someone else's gambling.