Review Published Assessing the Interventions for the Treatment of Gambling Harms

A GambleAware commissioned review conducted by the National Centre for Social Research has been published assessing the effectiveness of interventions for the treatment and reduction of gambling harms.

The review focuses on evidence relating to psychological and psychosocial interventions in the public domain that has been published between 2020 and 2024, while also aiming to assess the enablers and challenges to different intervention types.

Evidence uncovered by the review focuses on a range of treatment and support interventions that includes methods such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Motivational Interventions and peer-led group programmes. Whilst the review identified the strongest evidence in support of CBT, it also found some level of evidence on a range of other types of support, including Motivational Interventions, Residential Treatment, peer support programmes, helplines, and interventions for affected others (people affected by someone else’s gambling).

The review also highlights that evidence mostly focused on measures related to gambling, such as measures of ‘problem gambling’ using the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI). This was instead of broader measures of harm, such as mental health and financial harm.

Quantitative evidence identified also tended to focus on short-term outcomes, which was mostly an assessment pre- and post-treatment, rather than assessing long-term outcomes.

The review does signal a need for further research, and to help inform future evidence gathering, a number of other recommendations are made for service and healthcare providers, as well as outlining evidence gaps and considerations for future work.