Treating Problem Gamblers: Working towards Empirically Supported Treatment Robert Ladouceur Laval University Howard J. Shaffer Harvard University There is an urgent need for mental health professionals to develop effective treat- ments for pathological gambling. A scientific meeting was held in Quebec City in June 2002 where 13 specialists in the treatment of gamblers pursued the objectives of making the ‘‘State of the art’’ statement concerning the procedures and the metho- dology to be used in future treatment outcome studies. This paper introduces this special issue of the Journal of Gambling Studies and identifies some of the key issues that confront clinicians and researchers interested in evidence based treatment for gambling related disorders. KEY WORDS: treatment; problem gamblers; empirically supported therapies. The legalization of new types of gambling is increasing in most western countries. With prevalence rates of pathological gambling hovering between 1 and 2% in most countries, some observers (Vol- berg, 2000) have hypothesized that the increased availability of gam- bling will lead to greater numbers of people gambling and, as a consequence, developing gambling problems. Despite some evi- dence supporting the exposure model, this perspective remains uncertain since other forces (e.g., resiliency and adaptation) oper- ate to offset exposure and novelty (Shaffer, 2003; Shaffer, LaBrie, & Please address correspondence to Robert Ladouceur, Ecole de Psychologie, Universite ´ Laval, Ste-Foy, Qc., Canada, G1K 7P4. E-mail: Robert.Ladouceur@psy.uval.ca. Journal of Gambling Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1, Spring 2005 (Ó 2005) DOI: 10.1007/s10899-004-1915-9 1 1050-5350/05/0300-0001/0 Ó 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.