New official figures show gambling harm massively underestimated

New official figures (based on 9,804 respondents) were released today by the Gambling Commission that show the number of people harmed by gambling has been massively underestimated for years, both for those directly harmed and affected others.

The headline “problem gambling” rate is 2.5% which is five to eight times higher than the number (0.5% and 0.3%) identified in previous surveys.

Of the 11.4 per cent of all participants who reported thoughts about taking their own life or attempts, 4.9 per cent reported that this was related to their gambling either a little or a lot.

“These figures show what many of us already knew, that the harms caused by gambling have been massively underestimated, with millions of people in the UK affected. The number of people that have considered or attempted to take their own lives confirms the appalling scale of suicides happening now,” said Charles Ritchie, GwL Co-Founder.

“Now legislation needs to catch up with this reality. The new government must immediately bring in a statutory levy on gambling industry profits to pay for vital prevention and treatment, and take measures to restrict gambling advertising.”

The development of the new survey has been independently reviewed and endorsed by Professor Patrick Sturgis, London School of Economics, as being “exemplary in all respects”. These now represent the best estimate of the scale of gambling harms and give much greater detail of what those harms actually look like.

“For too long the public has been told that it is only a tiny minority of people who are harmed by gambling. We know that this has had very damaging and dangerous consequences of shame and stigma to what is a common experience suffered by millions,” said GwL Co-Founder, Liz Ritchie.

“This has directly increased the suicide risk.” 

For press and media enquiries, please contact GwL’s Head of External Affairs, Nick Harvey, on 07565 944042 or nick@gamblingwithlives.org

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