• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
• /
• v.10 no.6
• /
• pp.269-279
• /
• 2019

The purpose of this study was to investigate if a positive psychological-based music therapy program for gambling addicts' families, causes explicit or implicit attitude change towards gambling addicts. The study focused on families with gambling addicts, who use counseling centers for gambling addiction, or participate in GAM-ANON (GA). The experimental group (n=11) participated in 8 sessions of a positive psychology-based group music therapy program, and the control group (n=8) participated in 8 sessions of personal counseling, or GA family gatherings. To confirm treatment effectiveness, the attitude towards the family relationship, was measured by the explicit (Family Relation Scale) and Implicit Association Task (IAT) methods. Additionally, change in emotions including and anger (PANAS, HBDIS), was measured. Results of the study showed that positive emotions increased significantly, in the positive psychotherapy-based music therapy group compared, to the control group. However, in the treatment group with implicit attitudes, the rate of association of negative words with families accelerated significantly, suggesting that gambling addicts' families may have higher negative emotions. For the future, we discussed the necessity of providing a treatment program, that can directly lead to changes in attitudes of family members of gambling addicts.