Glasgow City Gambling Harms
Welcome
We are a small community interest company working with many others to reduce gambling harms in Glasgow. On this site you will find many sources of Support if you are affected by your own or somebody else’s gambling.
For frontline workers, Third Sector organisations and community orgaanisations, check out our Overview of work done to address gambling harms in Glaasgow over the past 15 years. You’ll find the Resource Library useful too, and we’ll keep adding to this.
We’d greatly welcome hearing from you about your own work. Do get on touch to arrange a screening event of our hard-hitting documentary One Last Spin.
Support
If you are suffering hurts from your own gambling or from somebody else’s there s a lot of help available. Gambling harms can include poor mental health, shame, debt, relationship breakdown and many other serious difficulties.
Feelings of shame and being totally isolated, not knowing which way to turn are very common and a great deal of help and support is available.
, “The gambling-related burden of harm appears to be of similar magnitude to harm attributed to major depressive disorder and alcohol misuse and dependence. It is substantially higher than harm attributed to drug dependence disorder”
– the World Health Organisation
The suffering brought about by gambling harms can range from mild to extreme. Far more people are affected than is generally recognised. If you’re suffering -from your own or someone else’s gambling you are far from alone.
More and more service providers such as doctors and social workers, debt advisors and teachers, banks and employers are becoming aware and understanding, and able to offer support.
Glasgow, Join us!
Are you a community organisation?
Help spread the word about gambling harms. Use our posters and leaflets. Help folk find support and become aware. Fight stigma!
Arrange with us a community event to film our award-winning film One Last Spin. We can provide refreshments and speakers if required and pay for venue hire.
Do you work in the statutory or third sectors?
Our film is a very good resource for training and development purposes. We also have some useful printed materials. We can speak with the voice of lived experience at training events.
Are you already doing work around gambling harms in Glasgow?
We’d love to hear from you and explore ways in which we can work and learn together. We’d also be delighted if you could contribute a piece about you work for our website.
Glasgow is particularly badly affected by gambling harms. The City has more bookmakers than anywhere in the UK outside some areas of London. As is the case elsewhere these cluster in the most disadvantaged areas.
Recent decades have seen the rise of online gambling which has led to an expansion of harms. Most of us have ‘a casino in our pocket’.
The scale and nature of gambling harms are being increasingly recognised but more needs to be done. This website is part of a small project which aims to provide an introduction to the issue of gambling harms in Glasgow and set them in broad contexts.
We provide information about work done in Glasgow to challenge harms over the past fifteen years. We also link to places offering support to those suffering harms. It is important to recognise that not only an indvidual may suffer distress with their gambling. On average six people close to them may be severely affected also.
The project aims to provide frontline workers with basic awareness and suggestions for identifying gambling harms and towards suport pathways.
We are also hoping to contribute to raising awareness and conversation in citizen communities across Glasgow.