Understanding gambling harms
We recognise that gambling can lead to a range of harms, which can affect both the person gambling and those around them.
In our Annual Treatment and Support Survey, 13.1% of adults (equivalent to approximately 6.8 million GB adults) were classified as experiencing any level of gambling problems (PGSI 1+).
These harms can include:
Some of these harms can last long after problems with gambling have stopped.
Our research shows that, because of inequalities in society, people in some communities are more likely to experience harms from gambling. We believe it’s vital to understand how gambling harms develop, how they’re affected by people’s lives and environments, and the impact they have on different communities. By doing so, we can work towards our vision of keeping society safe from gambling harms.
We have commissioned a range of projects to improve understanding of how gambling harms develop, persist and can become more serious over time.
Our Annual Treatment and Support Survey provides a detailed view of the various harms people experience, whilst our Minority Communities and Gambling Harms report reveals the ways in which existing inequalities within society can make these harms worse for certain groups.
Our Harms Framework research programme shows the importance of developing tools that can measure how gambling harms affect people’s emotional and physical wellbeing and their relationships with others, as well as causing financial issues.
of adults in our Annual Treatment and Support Survey, (equivalent to approximately 6.8 million GB adults) were classified as experiencing any level of gambling problems (PGSI 1+).
Here are some of the ways our research is driving meaningful change in how gambling harms are understood and addressed in Great Britain:
We're committed to putting the voices of people with lived experience of gambling harms at the heart of our research. Involving them in our research helps us understand what gambling harms truly means for individuals and communities, and how best to address them.
Our research has demonstrated that stigma is the main barrier preventing people experiencing gambling harms from accessing support. We’ve developed the stigma language guide to make sure that researchers and stakeholders understand how stigma can make harms worse.
We’ve learnt that there are many people who are not looking for formal support from a service but do want to try and reduce their gambling on their own. This research is informing our work on self-help tools and digital app solutions.
Our work has demonstrated issues in the tools used to measure gambling harms, and how these could be addressed by including the experience of different communities. Our findings have highlighted which populations are most affected, how harms are experienced at both individual and community levels, and the specific treatment and support needs of each.
The insights gained from these projects have helped us make decisions about our work, including our commissioning approach, how we position our organisation and how we work with the National Gambling Support Network.
We have produced heat maps, which show how the level of gambling harms and demand for support vary across the country. These maps have been produced for all local authorities and all parliamentary constituencies in Great Britain.
Within these maps you can search for a particular area in Great Britain, and it brings up the data for that area*, as well as an infographic on gambling harms.
*Please note that the data may not exactly match the raw data found within the tables above (as mentioned this data is statistically modelled to ensure robustness).
Read the latest updates on understanding gambling harms on our news page.
We advertise all our live funding opportunities on our website.
Unfortunately, this service is for UK residents only. You can find out more about international support here.