A woman who has been trying to deal with the negative consequences of gambling is now calling for more to be done to help female problem gamblers, saying that compulsive gambling is mistakenly considered as a problem which affects mostly men.
The 31-year-old Katie Clarke sought professional help for her problem gambling in July 2018. However, she was surprised to see that gambling addiction actually lacked publicised support, especially when it comes to female gamblers. Ms Clarke has revealed that her compulsive gambling habits led her to a £25,000 of debt but she is now in remission.
As the Evening Standard revealed, apart from trying to deal with the negative consequences of gambling, the young woman is trying to raise public awareness about the gambling-related harm which affects not only men but a lot of women, too. She has revealed that she has started documenting her journey on social media channels such as Twitter and YouTube because she knew that she needed to share her story and urge social media to make a support network for women like her.
According to figures released by the largest provider of gambling addiction support in the UK, GamCare, the number of women calling its national helpline has sharply increased over the past five years. The independent charity organisation revealed that a total of 2,439 women sought help for their gambling in 2014, while their number almost doubled to 4,129 in 2018.
UK Gambling Landscape Has Changed, as More Women Get Hooked on Gambling
As Casino Guardian has previously reported, the last few years have seen a sharp increase in the number of problem gamblers in the UK. Local authorities, charity organisations and anti-gambling campaigners have been trying to address the issue with larger funding and various campaigns aimed to raise people’s awareness of the problem.
At a time when the pressure of the UK Government has been growing, urging it to roll out a gambling industry tax, extra funding estimated to £3.9 million has been aimed to expand the existing National Gambling Treatment Service.
According to some experts, such as the CEO of Breakeven, Ian Semel, the gambling landscape in the UK has changed over the past few years. Mr Semel explained that several years ago, the only women affected by gambling were somehow related to the problem gamblers themselves, being their wives, mothers or sisters. However, the landscape has changed now, with a lot more women confessing to be gamblers themselves, with special preferences to online gambling.
Mr Semel shared that the days when women were just gambling on bingo are long gone, as there are many female gamblers who are regularly gambling in online casinos or on sports. According to him, the massive increase in the number of female customers of gambling is largely due to operators’ aggressive strategies which are leading to normalisation of gambling. He further confirmed that gambling could affect women just as much as it affects men, calling it “a destructive, hidden addiction” which could affect anyone.
His point has been confirmed by Katie Clarke, who agrees that gambling is often seen as a form of escape from certain things in a person’s life, problems they have not dealt with. She explained that there is often much more behind a certain addiction than people usually think, as such compulsion and dependency is often due to some kind of psychological trauma a lot of people have faced in the past.
- Author
Daniel Williams
