Working with the lapsed client

What can you do?

Sometimes during the change process when clients have started to recover, they slip back into gambling again. Slipping back, or relapse, happens to many people, and does not mean your client cannot or will not change.

During relapse, you should help your client to explore ways to avoid future relapses and encourage them to learn from their relapse behaviour to prevent future occurrences:

• Identify a relapse when it occurs
• Re-establish your client's commitment and ability to change
• Provide crisis intervention
• Avoid blame
• “Name and normalise” your client's relapse behaviour
• Help your client understand that lapse is a common part of the process of change
• Help your client to understand the triggers for lapse
• Develop strategies to avoid relapse
• Recognise and reinforce your client’s ability to successfully maintain change
• Encourage your client to re-engage with the
  • Gambler's Help services (PDF, 855 KB)

What can Gambler’s Help do?

At this stage, your client may need to re-engage with their local Gambler’s Help service. For some clients, this may be a brief intervention while for others, it may mark a new episode of care.

Gambler’s Help can also provide you with information on strategies to deal with lapse and relapse through:

• Secondary consultation
• Provider education

• Email