Gambling - Defining Gambling Harm

As part of their recently launched National Strategy to Reduce Gambling Harms a new framework to understand gambling harms experienced by children and young people has now been published by the Gambling Commission.

The new framework document can be found here.

The document  has two stated objectives:

1. to provide a working definition of gambling-related harms and situate this within a new framework for policy and regulatory action, and
2. drawing on this definition, to outline a range of measures and metrics which relate to these harms and identify which could robustly be built into a framework for measuring the social costs of gambling-related harms.

The proposed definition of gambling related harm is:

“Gambling-related harms are the adverse impacts from gambling on the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, communities and society. These harms are diverse, affecting resources, relationships and health, and may reflect an interplay between individual, family and community processes. The harmful effects from gambling may be short-lived but can persist, having longer-term and enduring consequences that can exacerbate existing inequalities.”