Men's Health Week Blog

 

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Men’s Health Week is an opportunity to raise awareness of the physical and mental health challenges experienced by men and focus on promoting wellbeing. This year, Men’s Health Week runs from the 9th to the 15th of June.  In this blog, we’ll investigate how gambling harm affects men’s wellbeing and illuminate what support is available for men.

 

Men’s Gambling Behaviours

According to the Gambling Survey for Great Britain, over half (53%) of men had participated in gambling in the previous four weeks. This was highest amongst men aged between 45 and 64 years old, with 57% of men in this age range having gambled in the last 4 weeks compared to 50% of men aged between 18 and 44 and 48% of men aged 65 and over.

Looking closer at men’s engagement with gambling, men are more likely than women to participate in a form of online gambling, with 42% of men having engaged in online gambling in the last four weeks compared to 33% of women. The most common forms of gambling that men participated in (when removing lottery draws) were betting, scratch cards, and instant win games with 19%, 11%, and 8% of men having participated in these in the previous four weeks respectively.

 

Men and Gambling Harm

Gambling harm has been shown to affect men's wellbeing, and is linked to higher rates of stress, anxiety, and depression. When polled by Ipsos and GambleAware, 20% of male respondents reported that gambling had caused them to experience mental health problems. On top of this, Public Health England’s review into gambling-related harms found that gamblers reported feelings of guilt, shame, lower self-esteem, and loneliness, as well as experiencing sleep problems and neglecting self-care because of gambling.

As well as having direct impacts on wellbeing, gambling harm can also impact relationships and financial health; 2% of men who had gambled in the last 12 months reported experiencing relationship breakdown and up to 37% of men reported gambling more than they could afford to lose at least sometime in the previous year.

On top of this, men’s wellbeing can be affected by someone else’s gambling. The Gambling Survey of Great Britain recorded that 8.6% of male respondents experienced health problems at least occasionally in the last year because of someone else’s gambling, and 9.9% of male respondents reported feeling embarrassment, guilt, or shame because of someone else’s gambling too.

With how seriously gambling harm can impact men’s wellbeing, it’s important that we understand what support is available for those affected by gambling harm.

 

Support for Men at PCGS

The Primary Care Gambling service provides free and confidential support for all adults experiencing gambling harm across Great Britain. We provide holistic care and use a multidisciplinary approach to ensure that our patients receive the appropriate support that they need. 
An example of this support are our men’s only group support sessions. Here, men can find a strong and inclusive community of their peers where they can support each other on their recovery journeys.

Our group support sessions are designed to support men by instilling feelings of identification, catharsis, unity, and hope.

Our groups allow attendees to come out of an isolated struggle and experience an identification with other men who are grappling with similar challenges, so they can share and explore their feelings and difficulties openly and honestly.

Gambling harms and the unpleasant feelings that go along with it often lead people to live in a closed-off way, but taking emotional risks and opening up with others who can relate can provide considerable catharsis. 

Our attendees are also empowered to be a valuable part of the group making progress together, and this shared sense of unity offers feelings of belonging, closeness, and safety that can be very healing.

Finally, our groups offer men a feeling of hope that they’ll be able to make and maintain positive progress as their peers around them are. For example, our past patient Bryan still attends our group sessions over a year after he was referred to PCGS to provide guidance and support to those who are in a similar situation to the one he was in when he first joined.

To summarise, our groups offer our patients the chance to:

  • become established in a consistent supportive peer group
  • express themselves openly with people who understand
  • discuss their successes and struggles confidentially 
  • gain new insight into their own thoughts, feelings and behaviour
  • learn more about the overall nature of recovery 
  • find out how to handle difficult situations
  • minimise the risk of slips or relapse
  • offer support, understanding and encouragement to their peers
  • hear how other members approach the challenges they encounter
 

How to Access Support

The first steps to recovery are to acknowledge the problem and reach out for appropriate support. If you’re experiencing gambling harm because of your own or someone else’s gambling, help is available. The Primary Care Gambling Service offers free and confidential support for adults experiencing gambling harms across the United Kingdom. We offer a range of support, including one-to-one and group therapy sessions, and use a multidisciplinary approach to ensure that people get the care that’s right for them.

If you’d like to access support, you can self-refer on our website today by filling out the registration form at primarycaregamblingservice.co.uk, or by giving us a ring on 0300 0300 111. We’re here to help.

 

Sources

  1. Gambling Survey for Great Britain: Statistics on Gambling Participation – Year 2 (2024), Wave 2
  2. Ipsos and GambleAware: GambleAware Stigma Polling
  3. Public Health England and Office for Health Improvement & Disparities: Gambling-Related Harms Evidence Review
  4. Gambling Survey for Great Britain: Statistics on Gambling Participation – Annual Report Year 1 (2023)

Published: Jun 9, 2025