Gambling and Suicide: the voices of the bereaved must be heard

When our son Jack took his own life in November 2017, we knew that it was because of gambling: his suicide note was clear. We had known that Jack had struggled with gambling since being drawn in as a schoolboy. But we hadn’t known that it could be a killer. Gambling suicides were not talked about: the stories were just about money. The harm was calculated by how much a person had lost.

We wanted answers. How could something available on the high street and portrayed as ‘a bit of fun’ have killed our son? And how many other people had it killed?

We set about finding other families who had been bereaved by gambling. Within weeks we had spoken to 40 families who were clear that gambling had been the root of the suicide of their loved one. But none had had an inquest which had adequately investigated the role of gambling. Indeed, a number of families had faced a coroner refusing even to consider gambling: it just wasn’t on their radar. Inquests had not been a source of understanding or closure for any family: for many it had been further abuse.

We asked the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for ‘the number of deaths where gambling featured on the death certificate’. The reply was just 21 in the period 2001 to 2016. We had spoken to twice that number of families who had been bereaved in the previous 4 years.

But coroners weren’t the only ones. We started reading the international research on gambling. We met with many people and organisations, including the Gambling Commission and the existing industry funded charities: people who would surely know the link between gambling and suicide and the scale of deaths. We were met with blank faces. 

Based on international research, we produced the first estimate of between 250 and 650 gambling suicides every year in the UK. The figure appeared to be a bombshell to people who should have known and seems to have been a major driver in the movement to reform gambling and regulation. In 2023 the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) produced the first official estimate: 117 to 496 gambling related suicides each year in England alone.

It took almost four and a half years before Jack’s inquest happened. The coroner ruled that gambling had led to Jack’s death and no other factors were mentioned. He issued Prevention of Future Deaths notices to 3 government departments demanding answers on the ‘woeful inadequacy’ of information on the dangers of gambling and availability of treatment.

We set up the charity Gambling with Lives in 2018 to support the many other families bereaved by gambling suicide. Inquests are just a small part of the support that we offer, but we do see them as one of the major levers of change to make gambling safer. Coroners’ rulings are very influential and the battle to see gambling as a factor behind some suicides is being won. The coroner in Luke Ashton’s inquest which took place in 2023 stated that at the start of the hearing he had believed that there had to be ‘some other factors’ but concluded that there was nothing else.

In 2023 Gambling was included in the National Suicide Prevention Strategy as one of just 6 ‘common risk factors linked to suicide at a population level’ and organisations involved in suicide prevention, including the Samaritans, have stated that ‘gambling can be a dominant factor without which the death may not have occurred’. 

This represents huge progress over the last 5 years. But none of it would have happened without bereaved families who are now widely considered experts and are listened to by key policy makers. Their voices need to be clearly heard within the coronial process.