Gambling is an addictive behaviour that can have negative effects on a person’s life. It can affect physical and mental health, relationships, performance at work or study, get someone into trouble with the law and lead to serious debt and possible homelessness.
Problem gambling can be a very hard habit to break, but there are things you can do to try and avoid it. One of the most important things is to set limits for yourself and your family. You can set money and time limits for your gambling, and decide that you will only gamble with what you can afford to lose.
You can also try to postpone your gambling urges, and find something else to do if you feel the urge. This can help you avoid having to give in and spending all your money, which is a common temptation for people who are addicted to gambling.
There are a number of steps you can take to help yourself recover from a gambling addiction, including reaching out for support from friends and families and taking control of your finances. You can also talk to a counsellor, who can help you assess the impact of your gambling on your life and suggest strategies for coping.
The data collected for this project showed a significant breadth of experiences of harm across multiple domains in the lives of those who gambled and their affected others, and a high level of subjectiveness around what people considered harmful to them or to others. This subjectivity was reflected in the complex inter-relationships between harms and sources of harm, and in the difficulty in isolating harms to gambling from other comorbidities or factors.