© Chris O’Donovan Photography/Samaritans
Feature: Samaritans
Safer Gambling C
Samaritans publish practical guidance to reduce the risk of gamblingrelated suicide. By Damien Connelly and Peter White onversations that are courageous. Challenging. Difficult. Uncomfortable.
Stigma-breaking. Painful. Heart-breaking. Life changing… This is not an easy topic to either write or talk about and probably not easy to read either. As noted in Samaritans’ research, “Breaking the stigma around suicide and gamblingrelated harms is crucial for any prevention strategy to be successful.” If, by publishing this, we at Casino Life and Outsource Digital Media help break this stigma, we’ve supported our industry in making progress. “…people experiencing gambling-related harms were five times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than other customers. One in twenty (5%) had attempted suicide,” noted this Samaritans report. Suicide is a fact of our industry that is global; it is not specific or exclusive to any one county or jurisdiction. It behooves us as mature and intelligent individuals and organisations to accept and manage this reality to the absolute best of our abilities. Gambling and gamblingrelated harm are risk factors for suicide. We at Casino Volume 17: Issue 144
Life and Outsource Digital Media fully support raising awareness of the guidelines created by Samaritans in
the hope we encourage as many gambling businesses as possible to review and consider enforcing Samaritans’ guidance. In addition to the people with lived experiences who shared their stories and knowledge, the following operators and organisations supported this body of work: Bet365; Kindred; Playtech; Rank Group; GamCare; UK Gambling Commission – project funder; GambleAware; BetKnowMore UK; Epic Risk Management; and PGSolutions Group. Kindred has started to communicate publicly about its ‘Journey Towards Zero’ – such public communication will also hopefully help break the stigma surrounding this topic. Kindred has an ambition to reach zero percent revenue from harmful gambling by 2023. Harmful gambling sources accounted for 3.9 percent of Kindred’s revenue in 1Q21, according to the company. Land-based operators have decades/years of legacy 47
