A few years ago, problem gambling clinicians in Ontario began introducing mindfulness groups to clients as they felt that they could benefit from cultivating greater awareness of their thoughts and emotions while detaching from and not giving in to them. This practise is particularly relevant to people with gambling problems who tend to hold incorrect or erroneous beliefs about the nature of random chance (Toneatto et al., 1997; Turner, 2006) and engage in automatic thinking before, during and after gambling (Jacobs, 1988; Gupta & Derevensky, 1998).

Chen and colleagues in 2014, published an article explaining how mindfulness can be successfully taught to clients in a problem gambling treatment program and the benefits that the clients reported that they experienced as a result of participation in the mindfulness groups.