DSM-IV and the South Oaks Gambling Screen: Diagnosing and Assessing Pathological Gambling in Turkey Ibrahim Duvarci Azmi Varan Hakan Coskunol Mehmet A. Ersoy Ege University Medical School Psychiatry Department The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the DSM-IV diag- nostic criteria and the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) in identifying Turkish pathological gamblers. Fifty-nine subjects participated in the study. The subjects were diagnosed as either pathological gamblers or not (comparison group) through the use of the DSM-IV criteria and were given the Turkish version of the SOGS. Four of the ten DSM-IV criteria were found to be problematic in the diagnosis of Turkish pathological gamblers. The data concerning reliability and validity of the Turkish version of the SOGS suggested that the SOGS can be used as a reliable and valid instrument in identi- fying Turkish pathological gamblers. Most (16 out of 20) of the items of the SOGS appear to work well in discriminating pathological gamblers from the subjects in the comparison group. In the case of the two DSM-IV criteria and the four SOGS items that failed to discriminate, cultural factors seemed to be responsible for the failure. INTRODUCTION Although the personal and social damage caused by gambling has been known for centuries, pathological gambling has been officially recognised as a diagnosable mental disorder only since 1980. The Address correspondence to Ibrahim Duvarci, MD, Ege Universitesi, Tip Fakultesis, Psikiyatri Anabilim Dali, 35100-Bornova, Izmir, Turkey. Journal of Gambling Studies Vol. 13(3), Fall 1997 © 1997 Human Sciences Press, Inc. 193