The charity is offering free online treatment with trained practitioners using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). <\/p>\n
The service has funding from the Scottish government, under its share of the UK-wide gambling levy, until March 2029. <\/p>\n
Lorraine Hannah, the charity’s outreach and engagement practitioner, says online prize giveaways and games were a problem in the Highlands and islands.<\/p>\n
“Anecdotally, I’ve heard it’s quite a big issue because of social isolation, boredom and more downtime,” she says.<\/p>\n
“People can pick up their phones and gamble 24\/7.”<\/p>\n
She says gambling affects people’s relationships, finances, and mental health.<\/p>\n
The charity provides confidential one-to-one help for over-18s and can also set up software to restrict certain mobile apps and banking blocks for gambling websites.<\/p>\n
She adds: “Recovery is possible for everyone. There’s no stigma, it’s not shameful. Please don’t suffer in silence.”<\/p>\n
Scotland’s Public Health Minister Maree Todd said the government was working with partners to tackle gambling harms, with investment of \u00a37.9m announced earlier this year. <\/p>\n
She says the focus is on “prevention and improving treatment referral pathways”. <\/p>\n
The UK government says the new statutory levy is now delivering over \u00a3100m a year for research, prevention and treatment. <\/p>\n
A statement said: “The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) members continue to raise standards and support measures which aim to prevent and reduce gambling-related harm through a wide range of safer gambling protections, including online monitoring of play, deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion tools.”<\/p>\n
The Betting and Gaming Council has been approached for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The charity is offering free online treatment with trained practitioners using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). The service has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[103,61,60,410,411],"class_list":["post-591484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591484","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=591484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}