The Gambling Commission has published a new report detailing the responses from “25 in-depth qualitative interviews” with GSGB participants who had experienced gambling harm, demonstrating that routes to adverse consequences are “complex and influenced by a wide range of external factors.”
A report from the Gambling Commission aimed at identifying the routes through which some UK gamblers come to experience negative consequences has stated that the pathways to harm are “complex and influenced by a wide range of external factors.”
No shit?
The study, undertaken by NatCen and guided by the Lived Experience Advisory Panel, saw 25 GSGB participants interviewed on their own relationship to gambling harm, and found that ways in, consequences, and personal management strategies varied widely.
“Participants’ journeys with adverse consequences from gambling varied, along with their wider life experiences,” stated the Key Facts section of the report. “For some, their first contact with gambling was during childhood or adolescence, often starting with observing parents or other family members who gambled.”
“Financial impacts were often the first negative consequence experienced, which frequently led to further impacts on mental health and relationships.”
Most tellingly, and yet so obviously, the report also found that the journeys described by participants “were not linear and varied in pattern,” and that “experiences of gambling were influenced by other external factors.”
“Participants’ journeys with gambling consequences were complex and influenced by various factors including employment status, childhood experiences, relationships, health conditions, and wider socio-economic factors.”
Providing more specifics on the harms themselves, participants described “a variety of ways that different consequences, such as financial, relationship and health and well- being consequences are interrelated.”
“ For some, one consequence led to another, while for others, the consequences fed into each other in an ongoing cycle.”
Though those questioned also used “various approaches to reduce negative consequences,” including safer gambling tools, family support, or “personal measures,” there was “no clear pattern” in how they had helped stop or reduce gambling.
