Gambling Related Suicides Australia

admin 4/1/2022

Suicide Crisis Helpline (open 24/7) - 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO). This is a service for people who may be thinking about suicide, or those who are concerned about family or friends.
The report follows a format and style common to gambling prevalence studies conducted in Australia and elsewhere. As with those studies, the report is intended as a reference document. It is written primarily for researchers and government officials who have an interest in Australian gambling statistics.
ANROWS has funded a study currently being conducted by CQUniversity, in collaboration with the Queensland Centre for Domestic and Family Violence Research and the Australian Institute for Family Studies. The study aims to improve support services for women affected by gambling-related domestic violence.
“We don’t talk about suicide rate like we talked about the deaths in COVID,” Worland said. “There’s been over 1,200 suicides since March compared to just over 200 deaths with the virus. “They are the numbers we should be talking about.

Gambling Related Suicides Australia Fires
Gambling Related Suicides Australian
Gambling Related Suicides Australia Wildfires

This was a very small bet. An Australian casino was fined $64,500 after a 12-year-old girl and two other teens were caught gambling in separate incidents last year, CNN reported. The 12-year-old.

Addicts 6x more likely to consider suicide

New research has revealed that problem gamblers have a six times greater chance of having suicidal thoughts, or attempt to kill themselves. They are also 15 times more likely to actually die by suicide.

The report was commissioned by the UK’s leading problem gambling charity, GambleAware. It calls upon the government to do much more to combat the perils of gambling.

The level of risk for problem gamblers remains the same, even when weighted for other potential contributing factors such as financial worries, substance abuse and depression. Even ignoring such factors, problem gamblers are still three times likelier to either contemplate or attempt suicide.

Of those who partook in the study, 19% had suicidal thoughts over the past 12 months, in comparison with 4.1% of the general population. Likewise, 4.7% had attempted suicide attempt compared with 0.6% of the general population.

A study recently published in Sweden showed similar results, linking problem gambling and suicide. While the criteria used were somewhat different, the basic conclusion remains the same.

Profound harms

One of the authors of the report is a London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine professor. She believes urgent action is needed to help protect people with addiction issues.

Dr Heather Wardle said: “The harms from gambling are profound and can be devastating for individuals, families and communities. These results show how people with gambling problems are a higher risk group for suicidality.”

She added that additional training is needed for staff who could potentially interact with people who may be suicidal. She was critical of gambling companies, saying they need to “put people before profit.”

Urgent action needed

Liz and Charlie Ritchie lost their 24-year-old son Jack to suicide following struggles with a gambling addiction. They have backed the results of GambleAware’s research. They said that lax regulation of the gambling industry is a contributing factor to suicides like that of their son.

The Ritchies are also taking legal action to make the government legally liable for Jack’s death. They believe that each year in the UK hundreds of suicides are linked to gambling issues. They are calling on the government, the industry and the regulators to act now.

One area the Ritchies believe needs urgent action is banning gambling advertising. They also want a mandatory levy on gambling companies’ revenues. Currently, there is a voluntary levy, but it does not generate the funds that it should. Some gambling companies are contributing as little as £1 annually.

A group of gambling companies have said they want to avoid a mandatory levy. Instead they have offered to increase the amount they pay for the next five years, up to 1% of their annual revenues. This would see GambleAware receive about £60m each year.

Gambling Addiction Causes Another Suicide
By Peter D Mack

Man kills himself due to a gambling addiction he couldn’t control.

The names have been changed to protect the family and friends of this person.

A man living on the northern beaches area of Sydney was found dead in suburban bushland on June 1st. It was not an assault or murder but in a strange way, his suicide may have brought some form of macabre peace to his family, his parents and friends.

Where is Robert?

When Robert Fellows mother found out that her son hadn’t come home again one night she went to seek him out at one of the local RSL (Returned Servicemen’s League clubs, an institution in Australia). She went immediately to his local club and started to look for him in the poker machine area. She couldn’t find him and knew immediately what the problem was. She demanded some assistance from the club management by asking them for possibly the twentieth time to ban him when next he turned up. Robert had thrown hundreds of thousands of dollars at those machines over the last few years but time was running out.

The police believed that he had left the club around 2 am after a thirteen-hour session. He had been at two other clubs and two visits to his usual club during that time.

The last person to see Robert alive was a taxi driver who had dropped him near the bushland area. A search and rescue team found his body five days later. He was forty-five.

His wife Jenny and mother Ruth had been to every similar club over the recent years trying to get him banned. The only way this could have been done was to get him to ban himself from any club, pub or location that had poker machines. He was the only person who could do it. Jenny and Ruth had tried to get him to do this time after time.

Winning the Big One

Two years ago Robert had two major wins and won $60,000. He soon lost it and then went back to try to get “The big one,” as he kept saying. A year ago he approached his parents for another substantial loan for his business which was severely suffering. They agreed to it on condition that he went to Gamblers Anonymous. After the first visit with his mother to a meeting, she followed quietly in her car to ensure that he went to the second. He walked away telling her that “I am not like all those other yobbos.” “You are exactly like them,” she told him “You just haven’t lost everything yet. ”He did not make a third visit.

Robert lost more and more including family, friends and worst of all Jenny and his family. She told him that she needed access and total control over the family and business finances and then she would consider coming back home. After agreeing she went through the accounts and discovered that he had spent the deposits of three new jobs for his business.

Ambassador program for high rollers

Another $60,000 had been poured into the machines. After more complaints to the clubs management seeking some form of response and responsibility Jenny and Ruth found out that his main club had made him a member of their ‘Ambassador’ program for high rollers. He was given access to a special car park and red carpet access without having to sign in at the entrance. He was given points that he could spend in the club on drinks and when he ran out of cigarettes a staff member left the building to get his favourite brand for him. His Ambassador card allowed Robert to set his own maximum limits.

No remorse

Finally when all was lost Ruth went one more time to the management to ask if they would help pay for his funeral as his family were deeply in debt. The management declined and gave her some information for community groups who may be able to assist. All she and Jenny wanted was some minuscule sense of sorrow, recognition and acceptance of what they had assisted in causing.

Those two poor women received nothing: absolutely nothing at all. You would think that with his history with his club the management would have made an exception in his case. Funeral costs were a grain of sand on the beach compared to their $56.2 million revenue. Maybe they said no because they would have to then do the same for the next person to fall foul of the situation. This simply tells me that there are many more than just Robert Fellows with the same or heaven forbid worse symptoms. How could they simply ignore what they were seeing?

Gambling is a real addiction

A spokesman for ClubsNSW stated that self-exclusion was a satisfactory way to curb uncontrolled gambling. There is no real system in place to stop this happening again. They also stated that this is not an unusual story. There are hundreds of Roberts out there and tomorrow some of them will also be dead but nobody appears to care. Why don’t the authorities do something about it? Forget about the tax revenue just put a stop to it.

FYI…According to last year’s annual report, Robert’s favourite club took in $13.2 million from catering and drinks. They gave away $1.9 million in community support. They took in $43 million from its poker machines.

Casino owners refuse to listen

Poker machines appear to have very little restrictions with regard to placement. They are found in casinos, clubs even golf clubs, pubs, bars and hotels. It beggars belief that after so many requests from an obviously very distraught wife and mother the clubs did absolutely nothing to help. His home club was more concerned in making him an Ambassador member with benefits. This just upped his expectations and he spent more and more time and money at the club. They refused to listen to the problems and then made the problems a whole lot worse.

Even though Australia is a very small country it is globally number one in per capita gambling-related suicides. $23 billion was gambled away last year (The population is almost 25 million) of this more than half was due to poker machines. Accounting for less than 0.5 per cent of the world’s population, the nation is home to a fifth of the world’s slot machines.

Last time I was in the USA I visited Pittsburgh and apart from catching up with friends I wanted to visit the Andy Warhol Museum. After the visit, I strolled through the city and came across the Rivers Casino. It was close to lunchtime so I went in and had a coffee and a sandwich. I decided to put twenty dollars in a machine so that I could at least say ‘Yeah bin there dun that.’ The twenty yielded me sixty eight dollars so I took the ticket out of the machine and already well ahead I popped in another twenty.

Out came a sixty-four dollars and a few cents ticket. It wasn’t a hard decision. I then presented the two tickets and walked out with one hundred and thirty-two dollars and a few cents. Forty dollars expenditure, ninety-two dollars profit.

Not a bad result for about thirty minutes work and a nice lunch.

I found it very easy to walk away with my winnings. I also found it very difficult to place myself in Robert’s shoes. We don’t ‘get it’ mentally and emotionally but if you are caught in this roller coaster ride back to oblivion it must be difficult to see your problem. But as he said to his mom after the second meeting. “I am not like all those other yobbos.” Strange because he was the only one who couldn’t see it.

There must be a way to make these clubs and casinos see the problem and report it immediately. Then placing a ban on the person concerned. The places that have poker machines in their premises must surely belong to some type of association. They can then ban these poor people from their premises in the whole state. You need to step up to the plate New South Wales, Australia and fix this abomination.