What Support Does Gambling Therapy Offer for Friends and Family?

Gambling Therapy offers dedicated support and advice for anyone affected by someone else's gambling — whether that person is a friend, family member, or work colleague. According to the service, this support is available to anyone impacted by another person's gambling, and it combines practical advice with emotional support. If your concern is about someone else's gambling rather than your own, this is the part of the service designed for you.

Who the friends and family support is for

The service describes its friends and family offering as being for "anyone affected by someone else's gambling." That includes:

Family members — partners, parents, siblings, adult children, or relatives of someone who gambles.
Friends — people close to a gambler who are worried about or affected by their behaviour.
Work colleagues — people who see the impact of a colleague's gambling at work.

You do not need to be the person gambling to use this support. The harm caused by gambling extends to the people around the gambler, and Gambling Therapy treats those people as people who deserve help in their own right.

What kind of help is provided

The service frames its friends and family support in two ways:

Support — emotional help for the distress, worry, or strain caused by someone else's gambling.
Advice — practical guidance on the situation you are facing.

The homepage groups this under the heading "Their gambling," alongside "Help for you" (support for people experiencing gambling harm themselves) and "Self Help & Resources." That structure signals that the friends and family pathway is a distinct route, not an afterthought to the gambler's own support.

How the support is delivered

Gambling Therapy is an online service. Its stated purpose is "providing online help for people experiencing gambling harm," and it describes itself as a global service offering free practical advice and emotional support.

One concrete channel named in the site material is multilingual forums. These let you "share your thoughts, feelings and experiences of problem gambling with others facing similar situations to yours." For friends and family, the value of a forum is that you can talk to other people in the same position — people who understand what it is like to live with or worry about someone else's gambling — rather than only talking to the gambler.

The site also lists Self Help & Resources, which sits alongside the friends and family support as a place to find information and material you can use on your own.

What this support is not

Based on the service's own description, Gambling Therapy is an advice and support service. It does not present itself as:

A treatment provider for the gambler.
A way to make someone else stop gambling.
A crisis or emergency service.

If you are dealing with an immediate emergency, this is not the right channel. For ongoing worry, distress, or practical questions about how to cope with someone else's gambling, it is designed for exactly that.

How to decide whether to use it

Use the friends and family support if:

Someone else's gambling is affecting your life, your mood, or your relationships.
You want to talk to people in a similar situation.
You want practical advice on how to handle the situation, alongside emotional support.

You may prefer the "Help for you" pathway instead if the gambling that is harming you is your own. The two are separate because the needs are different: one is about coping with your own gambling, the other is about coping with the effects of someone else's.

Practical starting points

Identify which pathway fits — "Their gambling" if the concern is someone else's, "Help for you" if it is your own.
Try the multilingual forums — read other people's posts first if you are not ready to write. Seeing that others face similar situations is often the first useful step.
Look through Self Help & Resources — use the material at your own pace, without needing to interact with anyone.
Return when you need it — the service is online, so you can use it at the moment the pressure is highest rather than waiting for an appointment.

The core point: Gambling Therapy explicitly extends its support beyond the gambler. Friends, family, and colleagues affected by someone else's gambling are treated as people who can ask for help for themselves.