A man who ran up about \u00a380,000 of gambling debt is calling for more to be done around gambling advertisements, amid coverage of the football World Cup. <\/p>\n
Craig Clements said he began experiencing problems with gambling in his teenage years.<\/p>\n
This led to a decades-long struggle for the 49-year-old, which saw him gamble every penny he earned. Clements, of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, turned to the NHS East Midlands Gambling Harms Clinic in 2024, and now uses poetry and music to aid his recovery.<\/p>\n
The Betting and Gaming Council said advertising by licensed operators must comply with strict rules, and safer gambling messaging was regularly and prominently displayed. <\/p>\n
Local public health experts estimate about 20,000 people in Derbyshire could benefit from targeted support for gambling addiction, and are in the process of developing a new tailored strategy to address the issue.<\/p>\n
Roughly the same amount of children between the ages of 11 and 17 years are also thought to be at risk of problem gambling, according to the Young Person’s Gambling Survey.<\/p>\n
Clements said he would gamble on horses, football and roulette games in the bookies.<\/p>\n
“I was getting credit cards and loans out, spending thousands and thousands of pounds,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I was just down in the gutters really. I was really low, I was spending all my money. Anytime I got any money in, it was gone, and I didn’t want that any more.”<\/p>\n
In 2024, Clements completed a 12-week course, which involved a number of cognitive therapies. <\/p>\n
As well as using poetry and music to help his recovery, he is also writing a memoir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who ran up about \u00a380,000 of gambling debt is calling for more to be done around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[163,85,46,522,523],"class_list":["post-502232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}