Families of people who have taken their own lives as a result of gambling-related harm are being ‘routinely denied inquests that properly consider gambling’, says a new report.
The inquests are also failing to take into account the ‘role of gambling companies and the wider gambling landscape’ within their scope, says the study, which was carried out by researchers at Birkbeck, University of London and the University of Bath in collaboration with the Gambling with Lives charity.
This failure to properly take gambling into account is despite the ‘best efforts’ of the families to present evidence and raise the issue, says the report, which is the first to look at coroners’ inquests among families bereaved by gambling-related suicide.
Researchers conducted interviews with 14 family members over a ten-year period, and their experiences were found to ‘align with those of other bereaved people’ interviewed for the wider Voicing Loss project. The families generally ‘perceived there to be an unwillingness for the deceased’s gambling and the role of gambling companies to be included within the scope of the investigation and inquest’, the report states, despite many going to ‘considerable lengths to provide details of the gambling and submit detailed evidence to the coroner’.
This evidence was then either accepted without comment or ignored altogether, the document says, with no subsequent mention of gambling on the record of inquest or death certificate. This narrow scope means opportunities to help to prevent future deaths and inform debates about gambling reform are being missed, the researchers state.
‘It was so quick it was unbelievable,’ said one interviewee of their experience. ‘I just found it cold. It’s like a conveyor belt. We seemed to be in there, out there and they disposed of 30 years of life… It was as if they wanted to get the next one in, and nobody seemed to be bothered that my son had taken his life.’ Another described how they’d explained to the coroner’s officer ‘that I was certain that it was gambling that was the problem. And his words to me were something like, “Well the coroner’s not going to be interested in that”.’
‘The fact is, nobody is interested,’ said another. ‘We know, and have got proof…that he died from a gambling addiction. There’s – be it bank records and his emails and all that – evidence to show that, and nobody cares. To us, he’s dead; nothing can be done. But it is the prevention of future deaths that should be important, and you’d hope someone would care about that, and they don’t seem to.’
More than 10 per cent of almost 10,000 respondents to the Gambling Survey for Great Britain had ‘reported suicidal thoughts or an attempt to end their life in the previous 12 months’, the report points out, with an evidence review by PHE previously finding that people with gambling problems were ‘at least’ twice as likely than the general population to die as a result of suicide (DDN, November 2021, page 4).
Other studies have put the risk far higher. A 2022 evidence review published in the Frontiers in Psychiatry journal looking at studies from across the world concluded that ‘quantitative evidence suggests that suicidality is high among those who gamble at harmful levels. In clinical populations and in treatment services for problem gambling, between 22 and 81 per cent of individuals have been found to have suicidal ideations, while between 7 and 30 percent of individuals have had suicide attempts’.
‘Gambling may be called the hidden addiction but most families knew about the gambling or found out about it very soon after the death of their family member,’ say Gambling with Lives co-founders Liz and Charles Ritchie, who lost their son Jack to gambling-related suicide in 2017. ‘We do not want to lay the blame for this failure at the door of any individual coroner, but see it as part of the wider lack of understanding about the dangers of gambling and ignorance of the long-established link between gambling and suicide, which has been perpetuated by the gambling industry. The information and training needs are obvious – and these extend far beyond the coronial system. To ensure that future gambling deaths are prevented it is vital that the government ensures that every death is fully investigated and lessons are learned.’
We were not included – there was no thought about our loss: experiences of the inquest process among families bereaved by gambling-related suicide available available here