Spinning and Losing: Compulsive Gambling, Indebtedness and Trauma

Following a brief introduction, the event will begin with a 30-minute presentation of findings from a recent study conducted by the University of Salford and Northumbria University, which explored the causes of compulsive gambling and its relationship with experiences of trauma.

The presentation will share insights from in-depth interviews and ethnographic research with people who have experienced compulsive gambling, offering a fresh perspective on why gambling can become harmful. The findings challenge traditional explanations that focus primarily on impulsivity, pleasure-seeking, or chasing losses, and instead explore the roles of repetition, trauma, and unconscious psychological processes.

The presentation will be followed by an interactive Q&A and discussion session, providing attendees with an opportunity to reflect on the findings, share their professional perspectives, and consider the implications for policy, practice, prevention, treatment, and public health responses to gambling-related harms.

Compulsive gambling is often understood as a problem of impulsivity, poor decision-making, or a desire to win money, chase losses, and experience excitement. This event will present the findings of new research that challenges these conventional explanations and offers a fresh perspective on the causes of compulsive gambling.

Drawing on life-history interviews and ethnographic research with more than thirty people who have experienced compulsive gambling, the study explores how gambling can become a repetitive and compulsive activity that continues long after any enjoyment, excitement, or hope of financial gain has disappeared. Rather than being driven solely by the pursuit of pleasure, participants described an overwhelming urge to continue gambling despite being fully aware of its harmful consequences.

The research also examines the relationship between trauma and compulsive gambling. It considers how experiences such as abuse, exploitation, loss, shame, and emotional distress may shape the conditions under which gambling becomes harmful, and how gambling can function as a way of unconsciously managing or escaping difficult experiences.

Attendees will gain insight into emerging research that challenges traditional explanations of compulsive gambling, while contributing to a discussion about what these findings might mean for public health approaches, prevention strategies, treatment services, and wider policy development.

The event will be led by Dr Thomas Raymen (Associate Professor in Criminology, Northumbria University) and Dr Adele Irving (Senior Lecturer in Policing, University of Salford).

This event is open to anyone with a professional, policy, or lived experience interest in gambling-related harms, including those working in addiction treatment, mental health services, homelessness support, criminal justice, social work, healthcare, public health, and lived experience advocacy.

This event will be of particular interest to practitioners, commissioners, service providers, researchers, policymakers, and people with lived experience working across gambling harms, addiction, mental health, public health, homelessness, offending and rehabilitation, social care, trauma services, and wider health and wellbeing sectors.

if you experience any difficulties signing up to this event, please contact Adele Irving at a.irving2@salford.ac.uk. Many thanks! 

Anyone wishing to attend can book up to the event date and start time.