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Psychological Research

Gambling Harm to Families: Support for Partners and Children

Gambling-related harm to families occurs when someone's gambling undermines the emotional, financial, relational, physical, or developmental well-being of people around them. Partners may face debt, concealed transactions, broken agreements, fear, and prolonged uncertainty. Children may encounter household deprivation, parental conflict, disrupted caregiving, secrecy, and psychological distress. Family members can need immediate protection and ongoing support whether or not the person gambling meets criteria for gambling disorder, acknowledges a problem, or enters treatment. The most effective first response is to identify the specific harms, protect safety and essential resources, listen to each affected person, and connect them with independent professional and practical support. This approach follows the World Health Organization's public-health account of gambling harms and the 2025 NICE clinical guideline, which explicitly recognizes affected others as people entitled to support in their own right. WHO, 2024; NICE NG248, 2025.

Understanding gambling harm to families

The meaning of affected others

Researchers and clinical services use the term affected others for partners, children, parents, siblings, friends, and other people whose lives are adversely affected by another person's gambling. The term describes an exposure and its consequences rather than a psychiatric diagnosis. A person may be harmed by someone who gambles frequently, intermittently, or through a brief but financially devastating episode. The consequences depend on household resources, the relationships involved, concealed financial obligations, access to safe support, and the behavior accompanying gambling. Dowling et al., 2025, Part I.

Gambling disorder is a recognized clinical condition in DSM-5-TR and ICD-11. Gambling-related harm, by contrast, can occur across levels of severity and may affect people who never gamble themselves. A partner's distress or a child's disrupted living situation is a legitimate focus of assessment without first establishing a diagnosis in the person who gambles. Assessments of the gambler and of affected relatives therefore answer different clinical questions. WHO, 2024; NICE NG248, 2025.

How one gambling pattern creates several pathways of harm

A single pattern can generate linked consequences. A loss may prompt further wagering to recover money; another loss may lead to borrowing, secrecy, or selling possessions; discovery of debt may destabilize trust, housing, and parenting. The same family may experience anxiety, reduced spending on food or medical care, arguments, isolation from friends, and difficulties concentrating at school or work. These are interacting processes, and their sequence differs between households. Identifying the sequence helps services intervene at the points where damage is occurring rather than treating every problem as a question of willpower. The WHO identifies financial distress, relationship breakdown, family violence, and neglect of children among major gambling harms. WHO, 2024.

What research shows about the scale of harm

A 2025 scoping review synthesized a large research literature about adult affected others and found emotional and relationship harms particularly common, followed by financial and health harms. General-population estimates of adults affected by another person's gambling varied widely, approximately 4.5% to 21.2%, partly because studies operationalized exposure and direct harm differently. A frequently cited estimate that one person with high-risk gambling affects around six other people describes an average reported in particular study settings, not a universal multiplier or a count that can be applied to an individual family. The review also described harms that persist after gambling-related problems subside. Dowling et al., 2025, Part I.

NICE reports an estimate that around 7% of Great Britain's population, including adults and young people, are affected others; the guideline emphasizes that different survey methods produce different estimates. Population surveys may ask whether a person knows someone who gambles problematically, whether they have experienced a gambling-related consequence, or whether harm occurred in a specified time period. These outcomes should not be pooled as though they were equivalent. Country, social network, gambling product, household composition, gender, and access to support also influence findings. NICE NG248, Context.

Much of the family-harm literature is cross-sectional or based on help-seeking participants. Such work establishes patterns of association and lived experience; it usually cannot isolate how much harm gambling caused compared with concurrent debt, mental illness, substance use, economic insecurity, or prior family violence. Qualitative studies document the processes through which gambling becomes damaging, whereas longitudinal studies offer stronger evidence about temporal ordering. Scientific interpretation requires all three levels of evidence to be considered together.

Financial harm and household security

Losses, hidden debt, and basic needs

Family financial harm ranges from missed discretionary goals to loss of rent money, unpaid utilities, food insecurity, debt collection, depleted savings, and threatened housing. A partner may learn that shared accounts have been used for wagering, that credit was opened without their knowledge, or that family possessions have been pledged. A child may experience reduced access to meals, school supplies, transport, medical care, or stable housing despite having no understanding of gambling itself. Financial consequences can last for years because debt repayment, damaged credit, and lost assets persist after wagering stops. WHO, 2024; NICE NG248, Context.

The scale of risk cannot be inferred solely from the amount gambled. A loss that is modest for one household may prevent another from paying rent or purchasing medication. This is why an assessment should ask what was lost relative to essential income, whether funds needed by dependent children remain available, which debts are legally shared, and whether the person managing the household can access accurate records. Family members should not be pressured into accepting responsibility for debts or lending funds as a condition of receiving support.

Protecting money without escalating danger

Practical protection may involve listing essential expenses, obtaining independent debt or legal advice, reviewing legitimate account access, preserving copies of statements, changing passwords on one's own accounts, arranging alerts for transactions, and keeping some emergency funds accessible. The correct legal and technical steps vary by jurisdiction and account ownership. Professionals should clarify which accounts and obligations each person has a right to control. For a family facing coercion or threats, unilateral financial changes may increase danger; safety planning with domestic-abuse services should take priority. NICE recommends access to support for finances, housing, legal problems, domestic abuse, and coercive behavior when relevant. NICE NG248, 2025.

Separating basic household necessities from gambling access can be useful when all involved freely agree to a transparent plan. Gambling transaction blocks, self-exclusion, and payment restrictions address access to gambling; they cannot repair trust, replace lost resources, or guarantee that gambling will cease. Their use should be paired with independent support for affected family members and appropriate treatment for the person who gambles.

Partners: trust, uncertainty, and mental health

Secrecy and the erosion of reliable information

A recurring clinical theme is the loss of confidence in what a partner says about money, whereabouts, and promises to stop. People may spend substantial time checking transactions, looking for signs of relapse, negotiating repayments, or deciding whether a disclosure is complete. This vigilance can affect sleep, concentration, intimacy, work, and the ability to make ordinary household plans. Such responses are understandable within a context of uncertainty; they do not establish a mental disorder in the partner. The 2025 affected-others reviews identify emotional strain and relationship difficulties as major reported impacts. Dowling et al., 2025, Part I; Dowling et al., 2025, Part II.

Disclosure is a process that needs evidence and safety. A claim that all debt has been revealed may be premature if liabilities remain unknown. A useful recovery plan specifies how verified financial information will be shared, how essential bills will be protected, who will support both partners, and how setbacks will be handled. Trust tends to depend on sustained, observable reliability and respect for boundaries. No partner is obliged to supervise gambling, guarantee recovery, or remain in a relationship while harm continues.

Anxiety, depression, social isolation, and stigma

Partners and relatives can experience anxiety, sadness, hopelessness, anger, shame, exhaustion, or avoidance of social contact. Social stigma may discourage people from telling friends, clinicians, employers, or family members what is happening. Some fear being judged for having stayed in the relationship or for being unaware of debt. These experiences deserve a direct mental-health assessment based on symptoms, duration, functional impairment, and safety; affected-other status alone is not a diagnosis. NICE NG248, 2025.

Support should be available confidentially and independently of whether the gambler agrees to participate. This includes psychological care for significant distress, social support, financial counseling, and practical assistance. NICE explicitly recommends telling affected others how they can access support from gambling services, healthcare, community organizations, and social services either alongside the person gambling or on their own. NICE NG248, 2025.

Children: development, caregiving, and safety

What parental gambling can mean for a child

Children are affected through their developmental environment. They rely on adults for physical care, emotional regulation, predictable routines, secure housing, and opportunities to learn. Parental gambling may compromise these needs through financial instability, conflict, parental preoccupation, absence, exhaustion, or abrupt changes in the home. Some children become aware of debt or arguments; others notice only that a caregiver has become inconsistent or distressed. The outcome depends on age, the severity and duration of exposures, support from other caregivers, and other family circumstances.

A systematic review by Suomi and colleagues identified studies reporting anxiety, depression, behavioral difficulties, disrupted family relationships, financial hardship, physical health problems, and exposure to family violence or abuse among children affected by parental problem gambling. The review distinguished studies where children themselves attributed harms to parental gambling from studies finding associations without direct attribution. This distinction matters: children exposed to parental gambling may also experience other adversities, and individual causal pathways cannot be established from every study design. Suomi et al., 2022.

Emotional burden and the child's role in the household

Some children blame themselves for tension they cannot understand. Others attempt to calm adult arguments, conceal problems from peers, monitor a parent's moods, or take on caregiving or financial responsibilities beyond their age. A child may avoid requesting ordinary necessities because the family is struggling. Such burdens can interfere with play, peer relationships, schooling, and the child's own emotional development. A child should be told, in plain age-appropriate language, that adults are responsible for adult financial decisions and that the child can speak with trusted caregivers or professionals about worries.

Supporting a child begins by restoring predictable care: regular meals, sleeping arrangements, attendance at school, dependable caregivers, and opportunities for safe connection. Children benefit from reliable information that is appropriate to their age and protective of their privacy. They should never be recruited to check betting accounts, conceal transactions, negotiate a parent's debt, deliver threats, or keep dangerous secrets. Where neglect, abuse, intimidation, or deprivation is suspected, practitioners should follow local child-safeguarding procedures promptly. The 2025 NICE guideline includes affected others of any age within its scope. NICE NG248, Context.

How to talk with children about gambling harm

For a younger child, an adult might explain that someone in the family has been taking financial risks and the adults are getting help to keep the household safe. For an adolescent, a caregiver can offer a more direct explanation of gambling, financial uncertainty, and the help being sought while maintaining boundaries around confidential adult details. The conversation should communicate three things: the child's needs are a priority; the child is allowed to talk about feelings and ask questions; and adults are arranging support. Promising that gambling will never recur or that every financial difficulty is solved can undermine trust if the outcome is uncertain.

Caregivers can check whether the child has experienced disrupted schooling, bullying, sleep problems, anxiety, unsafe conflict, or pressure to provide money. Teachers, pediatric clinicians, counselors, and child-protection workers may help coordinate support. A child with persistent mood, behavioral, or developmental concerns needs individualized assessment rather than an assumed diagnosis based on a parent's gambling. Parents may also need support to repair everyday routines and emotional availability.

Does a parent's gambling make a child more likely to gamble?

Research has examined whether gambling problems cluster across generations. A longitudinal analysis by Forrest and McHale used parent and offspring data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children to examine associations between parental gambling and gambling problems in young adulthood. Such studies help assess temporal relationships but must still consider shared environments, social learning, economic circumstances, and other familial factors. Parental behavior is one possible influence among many; a family history does not determine a child's future behavior. Forrest and McHale, 2021.

Prevention can include financial literacy, discussion of the mechanics of gambling and advertising, clear age-appropriate boundaries around betting, and access to rewarding alternatives and supportive relationships. Young people experiencing distress may need help with that distress irrespective of whether they currently gamble. Broader restrictions on gambling marketing and product availability also matter because children's exposure is shaped by the surrounding environment. WHO, 2024.

Gambling harm, coercion, and family violence

Problem gambling and intimate partner violence have been associated in systematic research, including studies involving people who experience violence and people who perpetrate it. A systematic review and meta-analysis by Dowling and colleagues found a substantial association across the available studies while identifying heterogeneity and unresolved causal pathways. Gambling losses can coexist with alcohol misuse, anger, coercive control, and pre-existing abuse; describing an association should never be taken to mean that gambling automatically causes violence or excuses abusive behavior. Dowling et al., 2016.

Economic abuse may include taking a partner's income, forcing loans, withholding access to necessities, threatening someone over debts, or using a child's needs to control another adult. Coercion, intimidation, and physical or sexual violence require assessment and specialist safeguarding. Family or couples sessions may be unsuitable when one person fears retaliation or cannot speak freely. The priority is safety, confidential support, and independent domestic-abuse advice. Immediate threats, assault, or danger to a child call for local emergency or protective services. NICE specifically includes domestic violence, economic abuse, and coercive behavior among issues for which practical advice or referral may be necessary. NICE NG248, 2025.

Psychological mechanisms that help explain family harm

Reward learning, loss chasing, and secrecy

Gambling environments reinforce repeated behavior through uncertain rewards, variable payouts, and emotionally salient wins or near misses. Some people attempt to recoup losses with further bets, increasing exposure to financial harm. Cognitive distortions such as inflated perceptions of control and selective memory for wins can support continued wagering despite negative consequences. These mechanisms help explain how a cycle persists, but no single model accounts for every individual or every family. When shame and fear of disclosure grow, secrecy may delay practical intervention and magnify uncertainty for partners.

The stress-strain-coping-support perspective

Family research has moved toward models that take the stress experienced by affected relatives seriously. The stress-strain-coping-support approach examines how a relative's harmful behavior creates stressors, how those stressors influence well-being, which coping responses are available, and how social and professional support may moderate impact. It directs attention to the affected person's circumstances and resources. The 2025 scoping review discusses this framework alongside earlier approaches to relatives' roles. Dowling et al., 2025, Part II.

A family member may attempt to persuade, confront, monitor, rescue financially, withdraw, seek help, or establish boundaries. Each response occurs in a particular context and can have different consequences. Labels such as codependency should not be used as substitutes for assessing coercion, poverty, anxiety, caregiving duties, and the person's actual choices. The focus of care is relief from harm, increased safety, access to accurate information, and recovery of agency.

Assessing family harm in clinical and community settings

Ask separately about each affected person's needs

A useful assessment establishes who is exposed to gambling-related consequences, what has happened, what is happening now, and what protection is needed. Questions can cover debt, hidden borrowing, food and housing security, family conflict, children's routines, caregiving reliability, emotional distress, threats or violence, suicidal thoughts, and available support. Clinicians should ask what the affected person wants from care and whether contact with the gambler is safe. Cultural, language, disability, and financial-access barriers may affect disclosure. NICE NG248, 2025.

The person's own gambling diagnosis and the family's exposure to harm require distinct assessments. Instruments such as the Problem Gambling Severity Index and South Oaks Gambling Screen assess gambling-related problems in the person gambling. They do not measure whether a child is safe or whether a partner has depression, trauma symptoms, or access to essentials. The 2025 scoping review found few affected-other instruments with strong psychometric evaluation and urged careful matching of measures to outcomes. A screening result should lead to informed assessment rather than serve as a verdict on an entire household. Dowling et al., 2025, Part II.

Urgency and risk assessment

An immediate response is appropriate when there is violence, threats, serious neglect, threatened homelessness, lack of food or essential medicine, or current suicidal intent. Gambling-related crises may involve debt, shame, relationship breakdown, or fear of disclosure. Clinicians should assess suicide risk directly and coordinate urgent support according to local pathways; risk cannot be excluded because someone appears calm or claims they have stopped gambling. NICE recommends suicide and self-harm assessment in gambling treatment and support settings. Families can seek crisis assistance on their own behalf when they feel at risk. NICE NG248, 2025.

When someone expresses an immediate intention to die, has a plan or access to means, or is in imminent danger, contact local emergency services or the appropriate crisis service and stay with the person when doing so is safe. A person experiencing domestic violence or an unsafe home situation should use a safe device and seek confidential local help. Family members should not be expected to manage acute risk alone.

How partners and relatives can seek support

Start with independent assistance

A partner can begin with a primary-care clinician, mental-health professional, gambling support service, social worker, community family service, or independent financial and debt adviser. Support can address anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, budgeting, housing, and safeguarding. Professionals may help establish an individualized plan for documents, safe communication, account protection, childcare, and access to benefits or legal remedies. This work can proceed even if the person gambling refuses treatment. NICE NG248, 2025.

For a household in financial crisis, priorities include immediate food, housing, utilities, and medical needs. For a household with threats or coercion, confidential safety planning precedes negotiation over debts or gambling restrictions. For a child, stable care and protection from exposure to conflict take priority. Assistance should be tailored to circumstance rather than prescribed as a fixed sequence for every family.

Boundaries, communication, and shared agreements

A constructive conversation generally focuses on concrete behaviors and needs: missed bills, hidden withdrawals, exhausted savings, absent caregiving, or distress about a lack of reliable information. Specific observations permit clearer agreements than global accusations. Families can state what they will do to protect themselves, which financial decisions require consent, what information they need, and where professional help should be obtained. Supportive, nonjudgmental communication can coexist with firm boundaries. NICE recommends helping affected others manage their distress and engage in nonjudgmental communication, while also prioritizing their own needs. NICE NG248, 2025.

A boundary is useful when the person setting it can implement it safely and within their legal rights. Examples include declining to provide money for betting, keeping essential bills under transparent arrangements, or requesting independent financial advice before making joint borrowing decisions. These are decisions about the affected person's resources and safety. A partner cannot guarantee another adult's abstinence through surveillance or persuasion. Where coercion or violence is present, direct confrontation can be dangerous and should be planned with specialist help.

Peer groups and anonymous support

Peer groups can offer understanding, reduce isolation, and provide practical perspectives on shared experiences. Online or anonymous options may be particularly accessible for people concerned about stigma. Their value varies with group structure, moderation, and confidentiality. A group is not a substitute for professional evaluation when there is suicidal risk, severe mental illness, abuse, or threatened loss of housing. The current research describes access and acceptability of several types of support, while rigorous comparative outcome data remain limited. Dowling et al., 2025, Part II.

What research says about interventions for affected families

Psychoeducation and individual psychological support

Psychoeducation can explain patterns of gambling, warning signs, debt, treatment options, and the distinction between care for the gambler and care for family members. Individual counseling can focus on distress, sleep, anxiety, grief, boundary-setting, or coping with instability. Some online low-intensity programs have promising outcomes for affected others, including those who would not attend in-person services. However, a promising result from a small study does not establish a specific program as reliably effective for all families. Dowling et al., 2025, Part II.

NICE's 2025 evidence review found insufficient direct evidence demonstrating the benefit of any particular intervention for reducing gambling-related harms to families and affected others. The guideline nonetheless recommends offering access to independent or joint advice, assistance with distress, and communication support on the basis of clinical experience and qualitative findings. This distinction between a recommendation for good care and high-certainty intervention efficacy is essential. NICE, Evidence Review G; NICE, Rationale.

Couples and family-based approaches

Couples or family work may address trust, conflict, parenting, finances, and communication when everyone participating has meaningful choice and can speak safely. Some studies report encouraging outcomes, but the 2025 review concludes that more rigorous evaluations are required. Joint care also raises confidentiality and consent questions because the affected partner's interests may differ from those of the person gambling. NICE recommends involving a partner or family member in treatment only when both sides agree. Individual and joint meetings can be considered according to need. Dowling et al., 2025, Part II; NICE NG248, 2025.

The presence of coercive control or violence changes the decision fundamentally: services should assess safety separately and avoid treating abuse as a mutual communication problem. Children's involvement also requires age-appropriate methods, protection of private information, and safeguarding oversight. Family therapy does not shift responsibility for gambling losses or abusive conduct to relatives.

Treatment for the person who gambles

Evidence-based treatment for gambling disorder commonly includes structured psychological interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy, with motivational approaches used to support engagement. Programs may address triggers, distorted beliefs, financial risks, relapse planning, and comorbid mental-health conditions. The person with gambling-related problems should have an individual clinical assessment; medications are considered only in appropriate professional contexts according to clinical guidance. Treatment can reduce future exposure to harm, but a family may continue facing debt, grief, and distrust after gambling decreases. NICE NG248, 2025.

Relatives may participate in a plan by mutual agreement, but they should not be assigned the role of therapist, financial guarantor, or safety monitor. A recovery process needs independent ways to track household stability and children's well-being rather than defining success only as days since the last bet.

Recovery after gambling has stopped

The end of gambling activity may be the beginning of a long financial and relational recovery. Debt may remain, childcare arrangements may need repair, and partners may need time to reestablish confidence in everyday decisions. Children may continue to show distress after a crisis ends; protective routines and supportive relationships can make recovery more secure. Professionals should ask whether essential needs are consistently met, whether abuse has ceased, and whether the family has reliable support. Dowling et al., 2025, Part I.

For some families recovery includes reconciliation; for others it includes separation, independent finances, or reorganized caregiving. Both paths require practical decisions based on safety and the rights and interests of everyone involved. Returning to gambling after a period of improvement should trigger renewed assessment of risk and supports, rather than an assumption that earlier protection measures remain sufficient. Families benefit when follow-up addresses long-term financial obligations and emotional effects alongside clinical care for gambling disorder.

Digital gambling and the family's changing risk environment

Online sports betting, casino products, and mobile wagering can make gambling available throughout the day, across locations, and through devices that also support ordinary household functions. Persistent access, advertising, rapid payment methods, and personalized promotions can contribute to repeated engagement. Their effect on any given person varies; product exposure alone does not determine a diagnosis. From the family's perspective, digital access can make losses less visible, complicate shared budgeting, and expose children to betting messages associated with sports and entertainment. WHO, 2024.

Practical measures may include reviewing marketing opt-outs, independent budgeting safeguards, gambling transaction blocks, and voluntary self-exclusion where available and appropriate. These are tools with specific functions and limitations. A person who experiences family harm still needs rights-based financial protection, mental-health support, and a safe home regardless of whether digital blocking methods are adopted.

Social inequality, culture, and access to care

A family's capacity to absorb losses depends on income, savings, housing stability, employment, caregiving obligations, and access to credit or public assistance. Gambling harm can deepen existing disadvantage when scarce resources are diverted from essentials. Cultural expectations regarding family loyalty, privacy, and debt may influence disclosure and help-seeking. Some families face language barriers, lack of specialist services, or anxiety about legal and social consequences. Services should provide accessible information, confidentiality, and routes to care that do not require approval from the person gambling. WHO, 2024; NICE NG248, 2025.

Research samples from specialist services may overrepresent people experiencing severe harms and underrepresent communities with limited access to care. Studies based on a single jurisdiction may not transfer directly to another country's gambling market, credit system, welfare system, or child-protection arrangements. These differences matter when interpreting intervention results and making global recommendations.

What is established and what remains uncertain

The existence of financial, relationship, emotional, and child-related harms linked to gambling is strongly supported by official public-health assessments and multiple reviews. Families warrant direct support, independent of the gambler's diagnostic category. Associations between gambling problems and intimate partner violence are supported by systematic research, although causation and individual risk differ across studies. Reports of harms affecting children are compelling, with stronger evidence for distress and family dysfunction than for assigning a unique cause to every later psychological outcome. WHO, 2024; Suomi et al., 2022; Dowling et al., 2016.

The comparative efficacy of specific interventions for affected others remains limited. Research varies in recruitment, outcomes, follow-up duration, treatment definition, and whether it counts reduction in the gambler's behavior or improvement in the family member's own quality of life. Small samples and selective participation complicate effect estimates. NICE identified no sufficiently convincing direct evidence to recommend one affected-other intervention over alternatives. Current clinical guidance therefore combines sound safeguarding and access principles with carefully qualified treatment research. NICE, Evidence Review G; Dowling et al., 2025, Part II.

Frequently asked questions

Can gambling harm a family without a gambling disorder diagnosis?

Yes. Household debt, coercion, disrupted caregiving, or anxiety may occur before a person satisfies clinical criteria for gambling disorder. Assessment should focus on actual consequences and immediate needs. WHO, 2024.

Should a partner pay off the gambler's debt?

There is no universal clinical rule requiring a partner to assume or repay another person's gambling debts. The practical and legal response depends on liability, assets, child support, household needs, and safety. Independent financial and legal advice is appropriate before assuming new obligations. NICE recommends support for debt and legal concerns. NICE NG248, 2025.

Can family members get counseling if the person gambling refuses help?

Yes. Affected others can seek professional and peer support for their own distress, safety, finances, and relationships. NICE expressly recommends access to help independently or jointly by agreement. NICE NG248, 2025.

What should a parent tell a child about gambling-related problems?

The explanation should be truthful, brief, and appropriate to the child's developmental level. Adults should explain that adults are arranging help and that the child is responsible for neither the losses nor the recovery. Restore essential routines and invite questions without exposing the child to frightening detail or making promises about the future that cannot be guaranteed.

Will children's problems disappear when gambling stops?

Reduced gambling may lower ongoing exposure to stress, but financial difficulties, grief, insecurity, or trauma can persist. Continued child-focused assessment and support may be needed. Suomi et al., 2022.

Is couples counseling appropriate when there is gambling-related abuse?

Safety comes first. When there is intimidation, violence, or coercive control, independent safeguarding and domestic-abuse services should guide care. Joint sessions may expose a person to retaliation and may be inappropriate. NICE NG248, 2025.

Related Articles

Gambling Disorder Treatment: Psychological Care and Recovery examines evidence-based clinical treatment, assessment, and longer-term recovery pathways for the person experiencing harmful gambling.

Problem Gambling vs Gambling Disorder: Harm and Diagnostic Thresholds explains why serious consequences for relatives can occur across clinical and subclinical levels of gambling severity.

Teen Gambling: Risk Factors, Warning Signs, and Prevention addresses adolescent gambling behavior, environmental risk, assessment, and prevention.

Cluster Gambling, Gaming and Behavioral Addictions provides the wider scientific framework for gambling, gaming, clinical disorders, harms, and care.

References

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Dowling, N. A., Hawker, C. O., Merkouris, S. S., Rodda, S. N., and Hodgins, D. C. (2025). Addressing gambling harm to affected others: A scoping review (Part II: Coping, assessment and treatment). Clinical Psychology Review, 116, 102543. DOI.

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Suomi, A., Lucas, N., Dowling, N. A., and Delfabbro, P. (2022). Parental problem gambling and child wellbeing: Systematic review and synthesis of evidence. Addictive Behaviors, 126, 107205. DOI.

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