A clinic for gambling addiction treatment is set to soon start operation in Stoke-on-Trent. The announcement has been made at a time when the National Health Service (NHS) is facing record demand from people who are categorised as problem gamblers.
The new clinic, called the West Midlands Gambling Harm Clinic, is to be situated in Cobridge. It will open in May 2022 as one of the two entirely new facilities operated by the NHS across the country, boosting the overall number of clinics specialising in gambling addiction treatment in the UK to 7.
In the period from April to December 2021, 668 people suffering from the most severe issues associated with problem gambling behaviour were referred to NHS gambling clinics in the UK. In comparison, they were 575 in the same period a year earlier, which means that in 2021 there was an increase of 16.2% in the number of gambling addicts.
The Cobridge-based clinic is to be run by Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. As it has been revealed by the NHS, people who seek treatment for their problem gambling will be able to access various services, including professional information and advice, psychological therapies, with support set to be offered both in-person and online. The provision of the aforementioned services could later expand in order to include some additional support from people who had once suffered from gambling-related harm themselves but managed to overcome their addiction.
The new clinic’s staff is set to include therapists, psychologists and mental health nurses. People who seek treatment there will also be able to access psychiatry services.
NHS Will No Longer Depend on Gambling Operators’ Voluntary Donations to Fund Problem Gambling Treatment
The announcement of the establishment of the two new NHS clinics comes at a time when the UK’s National Health Service has confirmed that it will no longer accept donations by the gambling sector for the treatment of problem gambling. As Casino Guardian has reported earlier, the decision of the NHS has been triggered because of concerns over possible conflict of interest.
The largest problem gambling charity in the UK – GambleAware – received a total of £16 million in the period from April to December 2021 in voluntary donations from the local gambling sector, including over £4 million from one of the biggest gambling operators in the country, bet365. The donations were aimed at funding gambling addiction treatment services.
Claire Murdoch, who heads NHS England, has written to GambleAware to inform the charity that the National Health Service intends to no longer depend on the donations of gambling operators and will be providing the funding of its operations in full as of April 1st.
According to research that was published in 2021 by Public Health England, approximately 246,000 British people are likely to be dealing with some form of gambling addiction, with around 2.2 million people either considered problem gamblers or at risk of developing problem gambling behaviour.
The new clinics for problem gambling treatment, in Southampton and Stoke-on-Trent, are set to add to the facilities that already exist in London, Manchester, Leeds, Sunderland, and the pilot clinic that is especially focused on providing gambling addiction treatment for children and young people. The Cobridge clinic is set to initially cover the areas of Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, with its coverage possibly set to expand across the Midlands.
- Author
Daniel Williams
