Almost everyone shared incidents of the person who gambled experiencing suicidality. Some people describe the other person contemplating or threatening to end their life, some attempted suicide, and others died by suicide. This could cause extreme worry and distress or life-altering loss to affected others. The impact of these experiences on the mental well-being of affected others was profound, often leading to long lasting trauma. Some affected others also describe their own suicidality.
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Suicidal thoughts and actions
Affected others sometimes worry that stopping financial support could lead the person with gambling issues into a severe financial crisis, potentially risking their life. This fear made them continue providing financial help. People said they were often judged for these decisions. Those affected are in a tough situation, trying to avoid further harm while dealing with the societal stigma.
Affected individuals can be very distressed by suicide threats from someone experiencing gambling issues. These threats add a profound emotional strain, causing fear and anxiety.
By maybe twelve o’clock lunchtime he would text me to say that his wages for the month were gone. Not in any kind of serious way that I ever saw but mentions of maybe it would just be better if I killed myself. How do you go on with this? Then I would have, obviously to that, huge emotional reaction, and I would run to him like, “Oh, let me try and make this better.”
Sometimes really frightening, sometimes just really sad conversations. He did talk about suicide on a number of occasions.
Expressions of suicidality were sometimes accompanied by periods of absences that worsened their worries. In one instance, a person recounted repeatedly contacting the police due to their husband’s frequent disappearances.
It’s like you’re constantly anxious, you can’t do anything, you can’t settle to anything. The number of times I had to ring the police and report him as a missing person, just simply because he’d been missing for too long, it might be three days that he’d gone.
The fear that a loved one might take their own life can become all-consuming for affected others. This intense worry often dominates their thoughts and emotions. As a result, they may find themselves withdrawing from their own lives, unable to focus on anything beyond their concern for the well-being of the person struggling with gambling.
For me, the big deal was, is he going to kill himself, and that was my fear. Is he going to kill himself? Is he going to drive the car over, because he’d be going up over the hills? Is he going to drive his car off the road? What is he going to do? It was living with that constantly in the back of your head, just takes the life over. It does take you life over because you can’t enjoy anything. You can’t really engage with anything…I was battling to stay afloat, really. It was an extremely hard time.
Expressions of suicidality often lead to urgent intervention. When someone struggling with gambling begins to think about or threatens to harm themselves, it was a trigger for affected others to get immediate help. This moment of crisis was a turning point for some, leading to the affected other arranging for professional mental health support, initiating an intervention, or seeking emergency assistance.
Death by suicide
Individuals who have lost someone to gambling-related suicide described how the person felt trapped, largely due to significant debts from gambling. This led them to a point of deep despair, feeling that there was no way out of their situation other than suicide.
He lost his house. That’s his future in terms of pension planning and everything else. This carried on and on. The debt got worse and worse. It never resolved itself until, sadly he was dead by the time we got there. That was about gambling.
Affected others described how losing someone to suicide altered them forever.
And now, when I said before, he would never do it, he’s not brave enough, no, he’ll never do it, he’s not brave enough, but he’s done it knowing he’s taken us– knowing my son had to see and hear and knowing that I had to go and tell his daughter he’s done his job, he did what he said he’d do and he may not physically have taken us with him, but mentally, there will never ever be a time– and I hope there will for the kids because they’re doing so well.
Affected others become suicidal
Affected others, including those with a parent who struggled with gambling, have also faced their own suicidal thoughts. One person recounted experiencing suicidality from a very young age, feeling that it was the only escape from the ongoing harm and distress caused by living in an environment affected by gambling addiction.
I think at the age of seven, I was on this sort of religious slash cultural sort of retreat with them at a family friend’s house, but they were sort of organizing some religious teachings. So, my cultural background for my family and my parents is Hinduism. I’ve never been a believer in religion, even from a young age, and I think that’s partly down to my experiences… And so, we were on this sort of religious sort of excursion at a friend’s house. We were playing video games. I remember pulling out a knife. I remember going to the kitchen and getting one of the big knives out and saying I want to kill myself and in front of all these people that I knew as friends.
There were times where I would be contemplating it by myself or saying it to my brother or whatever. I think my childhood was full of these sorts of memories of not wanting to be alive and thinking about suicide, thinking about ways to do it. I was a child, so I don’t know if I actually meant it. I knew I was very upset. And I knew I didn’t want to live at the moment.
The legacy of gambling-related suicide
The death of a loved one due to gambling-related suicide is immensely traumatic. Any suicide has impacts and is stigmatised. But affected others explain that gambling added stigma and the various institutions are not set up to deal with suicide related to gambling. In addition, affected others often found out about the actions of gambling companies and financial services. This was especially hard as affected others felt these has caused such an unnecessary waste of life.
Gambling companies and financial services
Affected individuals often experience enduring feelings of grief, sadness, anger, and resentment, not only because of their loss but towards gambling companies and financial institutions, which they may perceive as contributors to their loved one’s death.
I guess I’ll always be angry about the circumstances around it and I’ll always be really sad. We were very, very close brothers. There’s not a day when something doesn’t, whether it’s a little picture of Twitter and you think, “Oh, that’s…” Like anybody when people die… but I’m very, very, as you would imagine, anti-gambling. It makes me so cross how readily accessible it still is.
One person, serving as the executor of their brother’s estate, gained access to his bank statement. They expressed astonishment at the sheer volume of gambling transactions recorded and were horrified by the substantial amount of credit extended to him, especially considering it was disproportionate to his salary. This discovery highlighted the extent of the brother’s gambling difficulties and raised concerns about the lending practices of financial institutions, which seemed to enable such excessive gambling by providing credit beyond reasonable limits based on his income.
I remember looking at some of those things when [my brother] died. It was one of the most sobering things actually, his bank statements because I was frustrated with the level of overdraft, he’d been allowed to get compared to his salary…I asked for his bank statements and it was only two years’ worth of bank statements. You think about a piece of paper, it came in three separate packages, and the packages were this thick each. Literally, you would have minute-by-minute, by minute-by-minute pages of gambling. Then you’d get some payments in, and you can see how it would be just one more go, just one more go. Oh, I’ve won £50 pounds, then it’s gone again, and more when that’s gone. That was one of the most distressing things.
Practical concerns
The emotional turmoil is aggravated by practical concerns that arise afterwards, including handling the deceased’s affairs, dealing with outstanding gambling-related debts, communicating with other family members about the death, and navigating the procedures of a coroner’s inquest.
People faced intense stress from trying to handle remaining debts and financially support their family.
After he committed suicide, about seven months later I got solicitor’s letter from one of his personal friends who he’d borrowed £20,000 from, no signed paperwork, no formal agreement, no nothing but he wants it off me, this man. He wants his £20,000 back from me for his gambling debt…So the stress for one letter because then I just kept thinking, my God, who else–? They’re all going to come now. They’re all going to come for the house. Because all I do was doing was working four jobs to try and keep the mortgage going, to keep the house for the kids. Then to have complete strangers wanting £20,000 pounds because of him? He’s been dead nearly a year.
An individual recounted the traumatic experience of identifying the body of a deceased person. They also faced the stress of delays in obtaining the death certificate. The coroner’s inquest process forced them to relive the traumatic events, and this distress was intensified by inquiries from family members about the circumstances of the death.
