Trigger Warning: Mental Health, Suicide.
Over the 50 years, we’ve been providing support for gambling addicts, we’ve seen the real-life effect gambling harm has on gambler’s mental health. Gambling addiction is four times more likely to cause suicide than any other addiction. Mental health is a big focus for our support workers and therapists providing support, therapy and treatment across our Dudley, Beckenham centres and our Gambling Therapy online service.
Here To Save Lives.
Here at Gordon Moody, we’re here to save lives, supporting you and your loved ones on their recovery journey as addicts and affected others. We’re big fans of reading at Gordon Moody’s head office in Dudley, our Beckenham and Dudley treatment centres, and with the clinical team currently contributing to a gambling addiction textbook, we know how empowering, and informative the written word can be.
We have a big selection of books in our treatment centres covering a range of fiction and non-fiction, which our residents are at leisure to read during their downtime and between treatment groups and therapy sessions. Books can transport us to another world, view things in a new light and identify ourselves within the worlds of others, one such book that captures these things well is Matt Haig’s Reasons To Stay Alive and his follow up book, Notes On A Nervous Planet. Part memoir, part self-help and affected others guide maps how Matt learned to live again and how his experiences with suicide and mental health issues have informed his life and perspective, decades after his recovery.
Mental Health & Addiction
Reasons to stay alive is a fantastic Sunday Times bestselling book by Matt Haig that charts his lived experience of anxiety and depression, suicide ideation, and frank and honest documentation of his recovery and darkest days. With 70% of those coming through our Gordon moody, Gambling Harm treatment services having contemplated suicide or experiencing suicidal ideation, mental health is a very real part of our recovery programmes. Matt Haig’s honesty, wit and warmth around such a personal, emotional topic in his book is worth a read for each and every one of us, whether we’re struggling with our own mental health, addiction or anxiety issues or are wanting to support a family member, college or friend through a tough period.
His words are a reflection of his own personal growth, that rock bottom isn’t rock bottom forever, that one day you look back and realise how far you’ve come. That life is in the little moments and the declarations of honesty surrounding how you feel. ‘You are no less or more of a man or a woman or a human having addiction or depression than you would be for having cancer or cardiovascular disease or a car accident.’
Gambling addiction remains one of the uncomfortable truths of the gambling industry. It can affect anyone at any life stage, regardless of religion, gender or sexual orientation, in the same way, mental health can; ‘If you are a man or a woman with mental health problems, you are part of a very large and growing group. Many of the greatest and, well, tough people of all time have suffered from depression. Politicians, astronauts, poets, painters, philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, actors, boxes, peace activists, war leaders, and a billion other people are fighting their own battles.’
We’re creating a safe space for change.
We’ve created a safe space for gambling harm recovery through our residential spaces and online talking services. Our stats are improving year on year, with our service expanding to accommodate demand.
- 87% of people are accepted into Gordon Moody gambling recovery programmes and support.
- 8% are signposted or referred to more appropriate/specialist services.
- 5% decide they’re not ready for treatment currently. We will be ready when they are.
While most people making contact with us at Gordon moody are ready and willing to start their recovery treatment, not everyone is fully ready. So what do we do, and what should you do in that situation? Matt Haig has the right idea:
‘Talk. Listen. Encourage talking. Encourage listening. Keep adding to the conversation. Stay on the lookout for those wanting to join in the conversation. Keep reiterating, again and again; this is not something you have to blush about; it is a human experience, your experience; you are not defined by your addiction or struggle. A boy, girl, man, woman, young, old, black, white, gay, straight, rich or poor experience – your addiction is not you. It is simply something that happens to you. And something that can often be eased by talking. Words. Comfort. Support.’
- 77% of people self-refer to Gordon Moody.
- 16% are recommended through family and friends.
- 2% are recommended through mental health services.
‘It took me more than a decade to be able to talk openly, properly, to anyone, about my experience. I soon discovered the act of talking is therapy. Where talk exists, so does hope.’
So whenever you’re ready to talk, so are we. The Gordon Moody team are ready when you are to support and guide you through the steps to recovery from gambling harm and to take steps to help you feel truly alive, free of gambling addiction. We all have reasons to stay alive – addiction isn’t the end.
Where do we go from here?
Are you looking to support a loved one affected by gambling harm?
Willing and ready to act on your gambling addiction?
Want to be part of the conversation tackling gambling-related issues?