Gambling addiction in the UK: don’t blame GPs

While the extensive coverage of gambling harms is welcome, it is disappointing to see another inaccurate and denigrating portrayal of GPs.1Gambling has been conceptualised as a fun leisure activity. Any policy discussion comes from the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, not the Department of Health and Social Care (unlike alcohol and tobacco, for example). Gambling has not appeared on undergraduate or postgraduate primary care curriculums and a NICE guideline on identification and treatment of gambling harms is not expected until 2024. Teaching that is free from industry influence and adopts an all-harms framing is an opportunity to tackle this.2 As Van Schalkwyk and colleagues highlight, “The dominant narrative on gambling in the UK has shied away from confronting the root cause of the problem.”3GPs have, like others, been kept in the dark as to the causes and scale of gambling harms. Instead of suggesting they are to blame, we…
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