Every person affected by someone else’s gambling reports damage to their mental health. This exceeds any pre-existing mental health issues and is often deep and lasting. In some cases, their physical health also suffered.
Good mental and physical health is crucial for coping with the demands of daily life, overcoming challenges, satisfying relationships, working effectively, and contributing to society. This means the drain on mental health impacts communities and society as a whole.
Affected others described stress, distress, anxiety, anger, sadness and depression. For those affected by another’s gambling, mental health issues frequently involved feelings of lost control and powerlessness, a diminished sense of safety and security, lowered self-esteem and neglect of self-care. They may withdraw from their social circles, leading to isolation.
Affected others were also impacted by suicidality. This could be coping with the suicidality or the death by suicide of the person who gambled and experiencing suicidality themselves.
Even after the gambling stops, these mental health challenges often remain. Additionally, affected individuals live with the constant worry that the gambler might relapse, leading to a prolonged state of anxiety.
Although we are divorced emotionally and financially, I continue to work at the emotional trauma I have experienced. It’s not a quick fix.
During
Affected others remark that when someone is deeply involved in gambling, they can’t function well and this often gets worse over time. This not only affects the person gambling but also hurts those close to them, creating ongoing stress and problems in relationships and daily life.
Partners
When partners first learned about the gambling difficulties, they often felt shock, confusion, or anger. Then, initially, many were supportive. However, over time they often felt increasingly hopeless and burnt out from their efforts to help. These affected individuals became so focused on finding help and supporting their partners that they often neglected their own needs, leading to a deterioration in their own health.
You’re so bound up in what they’re doing that you neglect yourself really, and I really did neglect myself. I couldn’t afford to get my haircut to be fair, but I did nothing for me. I was doing nothing for me at all at that point. Everything was about him.
I started to get depressed and down. It started affecting me then. Where before I was feeling quite supportive, and vocal, and we can get through this, and we can do this… I kept thinking in my head, this is the wrong strategy, keep going on at him. It was like, I’ve got to look out for myself, but I couldn’t because I was too worried about what he was doing… For me, my mental health, I never got treated for depression or anything like that, but it was like, I was just sad all the time, and it just used to make me cry.
Partners often experience a deep sense of isolation in their relationships. The stress stemming from financial concerns and the changed behaviour of their partner can be overwhelming. They may feel they have lost the partner they would usually turn to, so on top of everything their usual source of support is gone.
It has a big effect, and with me and his family, I don’t have anything to do with them because I resent them for not being there and causing the issues we have with him over the years…Then they’ve painted me as a bad person over the years, and that means I have next to no relationship with them.
Partners of those struggling with gambling difficulties could experience severe anxiety due to their partner disappearing for extended periods without any contact. This can be deeply distressing, as they are left worrying about their partner’s well-being and whereabouts.
I knew that he’d had a previous history of mental illness and suicide, that really did freak me out, because it was like every time he went out, I didn’t know where he was and I didn’t know what he was doing. Those times when he went out got longer, so he might go, and he’d disappear for days. I wouldn’t know where he was…. Imagine anybody, if their loved one goes and for days on end, you’re just panic stricken. I lived in this constant state of anxiety all the time.
And at this point, I was starting to get a bit like worried. Gambling did not cross my mind. I was just thinking, maybe I’ve done something wrong, maybe he was angry at me for something…. I honestly did not know. But when he didn’t come home, then I was really worried. It was probably about 2:00, 2:30 when I realized that he wasn’t in the room, and I rang his phone, and it went straight to voicemail… we had to file him as a missing person.
A partner dealing with the ongoing despair caused by their significant other’s gambling difficulties experienced a return of an eating disorder. They saw this as an unconscious way to gain some control in a situation that seemed out of control.
I was anorexic then in my 20s and when all this blew up with [husband], that happened again, that anorexic and I suppose. I don’t know if I made that clear, but I stopped eating, I stopped looking after myself. It wasn’t an anorexia type of thing, “Oh, I need to lose weight,” because I didn’t, I was quite slim even then. My go-to thing was, “What can I control?” Subconsciously obviously, “What can I control? Well, eating.”
Parents
Parents feel confused or helpless as the witness their child becoming increasingly unhappy, angry, tense and socially isolated. As the gambling issues intensifies over time, they can be distressed by their child’s declining self-esteem.
Physical symptoms
The ongoing emotional strain felt by people close to someone with gambling problems often lead to physical issues like stomach troubles and sleep problems.
I started to get a lot of abdominal pain and then I’d come to realize that I’d got something called IBS, which is irritable bowel syndrome, and that’s never felt good to know that I’ve got something that typically affects 30, 40, 50-year-olds at the age of 15 and 16.
Affected others said they frequently struggled to sleep. The constant stress and worry affects their ability to fall asleep or stay asleep.
[Son] didn’t really want to worry his mum. So, he spoke to me, and he said Dad, don’t tell the mum. And me and my wife have never kept a secret about anything from ourselves. Never. No matter what, we never have. And I had about five or six nights when he first told me this very first time so it’s not, this was like five years before the major problem when he suddenly had all this debt and I knew it was gambling that I don’t think I slept for five nights.
It has impacted on my ability to sleep as well as I used to sleep. I don’t have every night that’s a bad night. I sleep pretty well most the time. But on the occasions when I speak to my son and I can see that he’s going through periods where he’s struggling for a variety of reasons, then clearly you start reflecting on that as his parent and I try to support him and his family in managing their life and the challenges they’ve now got with that, you know, financially, he’s still got a lot to pay you back. You’ve got those worries. And that affects us.
It’s just horrible… Then, I wouldn’t be able to sleep overnight and I’d always worry ironically, “Well, if he ever does anything, and I haven’t supported him, then, I don’t want that on my conscience,” and all the other things.
I’ll say this a bit tongue in cheek, I looked about 20 years younger five years ago. I don’t joke actually in some respects because everyone used to say to me I was young looking. Now I look at myself and my granddaughter says to me Grandad you look about 80. So, on a serious note it has aged me. And I mean that, and I know a number of people they would say it.
Legacy
The health and well-being impacts on affected others often remain after the gambling stops. The life disruption they themselves have experienced, lasting changes in the person who gambled and the long term consequences continue to impact the physical and emotional health of affected others. Additionally, such harms can ripple through the immediate and extended family and get passed from one generation to the next.
Parents
Parents often live with persistent worries about their child going back to gambling. These concerns can extend to fears they might lose their child to suicide due to gambling. Consequently, parents remain alert and vigilant. This ongoing state of heightened watchfulness and anxiety continues to take a significant toll on their mental health.
Emotionally, anybody that loves an addict on any level, as parents our fear is the loss of your child… You never lose that fight-or-flight feeling when you love an addict. It may be slightly different as a parent of an addict, because you’ve got that maternal instinct and paternal instinct. Emotionally and psychologically, the scars of loving an addict are huge. They leave you in a constant state of anxiety, like I said, fight-or-flight. You don’t want to go away for weekends.
From being someone who was looking forward to many things in life, I suddenly had a new worry and I’d say that worry will never go away. It changes and it eases, but there are up days and down days.
I’ve learned it is the thing that you worry about is what might trigger a relapse. And I think therefore all the things you need to learn as affected others is the things that can actually cause a relapse of us in anything in life, a family bereavement, a loss of a job. They’re all things that affect the impact on the way we feel, the way we do things and if we struggle to cope, that’s a factor.
Some days it’s like a current, it will just sit there and it’s there. Other days, it’s like a tsunami, and it can come in and it will wipe the family out. You live with that in your gut every day…You constantly live with– I would say it’s fear, and sometimes that’s at 10, and sometimes it’s at 1, but that fear never goes away when you have an addict with you. You’re just constantly watching for cues, watching for little changes in body language, reading into statements…You do live in fight-or-flight, I feel 24/7. That’s how I feel that I’m constantly on the edge with him. Whether that’s hanging off the edge by your fingertips, or just peering over the edge, it changes from day-to-day.
Same as my wife, our lives have changed completely. And the things we do, how we spend our time has completely changed… [Son’s] brothers would do anything for him, they have never resented it. They didn’t understand it. Now they understand it like we do, but they worry. They worry about their brother. They worry about what he has to go through. So, I think, you know, in summary terms, it has impacted on the family in ways that means that we now worry more about our son.
Partners
Supporting a partner through their recovery from gambling addiction brings its own emotional challenges. Partners of often find themselves in a state of constant vigilance for a recurrence of gambling. This results in feelings of insecurity and paranoia at any behaviour that might signal a return to gambling.
Some partners start feeling emotional distress a long time after their significant other stops gambling. This can show up as panic attacks or other mental health problems that were not evident at first. The hurt, stress and trauma from when the gambling was happening can take a while to show up. This shows how deeply and for how long gambling addiction can affect those close to the person who was gambling.
Even when relationships end in divorce or separation, many partners still face the effects of the harm they experienced. They describe these lasting effects as a form of trauma. The emotional and psychological repercussions of having a partner struggling with gambling can continue long after the relationship ends.
Although we are divorced emotionally and financially, I continue to work at the emotional trauma I have experienced. It’s not a quick fix.
Children
Children of parents who gambled can face enduring mental health harms. The negative effects of a parent’s gambling can affect multiple generations and relationships within the family.
This legacy harm this is something that’s going to affect my quality of life for a long period of time, it’s going to affect my mum’s quality of life. She’s still worried about paying off debts. She’s still working too many hours, and she’s got health problems too from working. And no doubt I’ve mental health problems from the issues from childhood.
I was just at home two or three weeks ago for Christmas, and it was pretty awful, actually. I think I’ve always wanted to escape from home, so I even had a panic attack on the way home… I don’t really get panic attacks, but seemingly when I’m travelling back, I seem to do. And I think it is difficult to see family for loads of reasons. I think the ongoing harms, legacy harms. It’s constant worry between us of each other and each of us not doing well in different ways.
Children often carry enduring feelings of guilt, loss and sadness that impact them in later life.
In certain instances, children who have been exposed to gambling harm during their upbringing describe developing their own addictions.
I think around this time I started to struggle with my own addictions as well. So, I mentioned alcohol as being part of it, but also drugs started to come into part of it as I turned 18. And as I got into university, some of that continued and that escalated. And so, my own addictions started to develop and just escalate and at the same time my IBS started to escalate and develop, and I just struggled.