Gambling-related harms: identification, assessment and management

Affected others

People who do not gamble themselves but who experience gambling-related harms because of the gambling of a family member, friend or other person close to them.

Case formulation

A hypothesis about the psychological mechanisms that cause and maintain an individual's symptoms and problems. It is a framework used by practitioners to help identify and understand a person's problems in order to develop a treatment plan.

Gambling-related harms

The adverse impacts of gambling on the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, communities and society. These harms affect people's resources, relationships and health. They can include loss of employment, debt, crime, breakdown of relationships and deterioration of physical and mental health, domestic violence and suicide.

Harms are not experienced only by people who gamble. They can also affect their families, friends and others close to them (also called affected others).

Gambling that harms

Gambling of any type or frequency that causes harm, problems or distress for the person experiencing it, or for their family, friends or those close to them.

Unbiased information

Evidence-based information from a reliable source that has been produced without input or influence from organisations with a conflict of interest, such as the gambling industry, and which clearly states who it was produced by and the source of funding.