{"id":216981,"date":"2025-12-29T21:45:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T21:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/216981\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T21:45:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T21:45:09","slug":"researcher-calls-for-more-data-on-gambling-related-suicides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/216981\/","title":{"rendered":"Researcher calls for more data on gambling-related suicides"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warning: This story contains discussion of addiction and suicide.<\/p>\n

Last month, Paul Fung’s friend took his life after battling a gambling addiction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Fung has lost people to gambling before, some of whom never sought help.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you or someone you know needs help, call:<\/p>\n

“The ramifications, for family, partner, somebody they know \u2026 [they have] to investigate what has occurred without them actually knowing because the story has been untold,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I’ve heard a lot of that \u2026 I didn’t even know they gambled.”<\/p>\n

Mr Fung knew what it was like to live with a debilitating gambling addiction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I woke up not needing to brush my teeth, have a shower, eat or do anything \u2014 the need was to get money to gamble,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Fung started moving countries to avoid debt, and at his worst, he lost $1 million in online gambling in about 10 days after stealing from a mortgage that was placed under his name.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Paul Fung is a recovering gambling addict who now advocates against gambling harm. (Supplied: Paul Fung)<\/p>\n

Mr Fung found recovery, faced his debts, and co-founded Gambling Harm Lived Experience Experts (GHLEE) in 2022 to help others.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since starting GHLEE, he said it had been incredibly frustrating and painful to watch the government stalling on gambling policy reform.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Australia has the highest rate of gambling losses per capita in the world,<\/a> losing close to $32 billion a year.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A survey found the number of Australian adults who had gambled at least once in the past 12 months rose from 57 per cent in 2019 to 65 per cent in 2024. (ABC News: Jessica Hayes)<\/p>\n

Gambling-related suicide\u00a0<\/p>\n

Federation University gambling researcher Angela Rintoul found 4\u00a0per cent of suicides in Victoria between 2009 and 2016 were gambling-related<\/a>, but said the number was likely far higher.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr Rintoul said authorities needed to know when a suicide was linked to gambling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Whether gambling was involved [in a suicide] or not really only comes out spontaneously during the death investigation if a witness, family or a friend mentions it or knew about it, or whether someone thinks to ask about it,” she said. \u00a0<\/p>\n

After a death by suicide, police are prompted on forms to record if the victim had drug, alcohol or relationship issues, but there is no prompt for possible gambling addiction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Woman<\/p>\n

Angela Rintoul’s research found 4 per cent of suicides in the state over seven years were related to gambling. (ABC News: Bec Symons)<\/p>\n

“It’s relatively invisible \u2026 family members might find out after the fact if there are credit card bills arriving,” Dr Rintoul said.<\/p>\n

While situations such as family members being contacted by debt collectors might show a suicide was gambling-related down the track, Dr Rintoul said by then, it was often too late.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“When that happens, weeks or months down the track, usually the coroner may have already finalised their investigation, and so that information may never end up back in the coronial records,” she said.<\/p>\n

Dr Rintoul and other researchers and advocates have been calling for a centralised data system for regulators, police and coroners to access gambling transactions across different platforms.<\/p>\n

“[Without centralised data, gambling platform] operators might say that they weren’t aware that this person had other accounts, or regulators might not realise the full extent of the cumulative losses that people are incurring across multiple operators,” she said.<\/p>\n

Dr Rintoul said this could help platforms meet the requirements of their duty of care, and create cross-platform loss limits, which would prevent gamblers moving from one platform to the next, compounding their losses.<\/p>\n

And, if a gambling-related suicide did occur, loved ones would be able to understand the circumstances leading up to the event, and the data could be used to inform policy, and potentially hold gambling platforms to account if they had breached their duty of care.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Paul Fung says it is important for gambling addicts to seek help. (ABC News: Jasmine Hines)<\/p>\n

In response to questions about stalled gambling reform, gambling protections, and transparency about gambling-related suicides, an Australian government spokesperson said it was working to address problem gambling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The government takes seriously our responsibility to protect Australians \u2014 particularly young and vulnerable people \u2014 from the harms of online gambling,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

“The federal government has undertaken the most significant gambling harm reduction measures in the past decade.”<\/p>\n

‘Policy paralysis’\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr Rintoul described the state and federal governments’ handling of gambling reform as “policy paralysis”.<\/p>\n

It has been more than two and a half years since the cross-party inquiry into the sector, known as the Murphy report, which resulted in 31 unanimous recommendations to minimise gambling harms.<\/a><\/p>\n

Among the recommendations were a phased-in ban on gambling advertising, introducing a national regulator for online gambling, and the banning of gambling advertising.<\/p>\n

To date, none of the recommendations has been adopted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This policy inaction is devastating for people and families who’ve been harmed by gambling,” Dr Rintoul said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We really need to to accelerate action on reform, and that’s an understatement.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warning: This story contains discussion of addiction and suicide. Last month, Paul Fung’s friend took his life after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[32984,1322,1853,1471,22629,112676,103,61,60,13742,410,411,1087,69656,112677,14394],"class_list":{"0":"post-216981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-betting","9":"tag-debt","10":"tag-depression","11":"tag-gambling","12":"tag-gambling-addiction","13":"tag-gambling-advertising","14":"tag-health","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-loan","18":"tag-mental-health","19":"tag-mentalhealth","20":"tag-money","21":"tag-pokies","22":"tag-suicidal","23":"tag-suicide"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}