
Leia Clifton, Senior Research Officer, Money and Mental Health
Introducing: Leia Clifton
2 August 2024
- Leia has joined as a Senior Research Officer, supporting the Gambling Harms Action Lab (GHAL), our exciting new programme of work engaging financial services in efforts to reduce gambling harms.
- Leia has worked across several policy areas, including refugee and healthy environment policy. Working with people with lived experience has been central to Leia’s work life, which is what drew her to Money and Mental Health.
- In this blog, Leia outlines the relationship between gambling-related harm and mental health problems.
- She also sets out her hopes of growing representation of gambling harm in our Research Community of ‘experts by experience’, and working innovatively with financial service providers to tackle these issues.
Financial justice and mental health have been central to all my work throughout my career, from campaigning for refugee rights to healthy weight and environment policy and front-line services for vulnerable women. I’ve seen the devastating relationship between financial harm and mental health in many different places, with money and mental health central to the issues people have shared with me.
My experience
Working in refugee rights, we often think of the trauma which forced people to flee their homes as central to their experiences of mental health problems. This is definitely a factor. However, research shows that other factors, including financial situations and good quality housing, are key to people living a good and healthy life in their country of sanctuary.
Working alongside people with lived experience has made me passionate to continue campaigning on issues affecting marginalised groups. People with lived experience are experts on their issue; if there is any hope of affecting change, they must be at the heart of policy-making. This passion brought me to Money and Mental Health and as part of our work into gambling-related harms. Here, the lived experience of our Research Community of 5,000 people helps the organisation identify policy and regulatory solutions to affect real change.
Mental health is central to understanding gambling-related harms
Since joining Money and Mental Health as a researcher, I’ve begun to understand the complexity of the relationship between mental health and gambling-related harm. The Gambling Commission defines gambling-related harms as ‘the adverse impacts from gambling on the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, communities and society. These harms impact on people’s resources, relationships and health’.
This definition reflects the reality of a combination of complex social, financial and mental health factors impacting both individuals, their loved ones and society, in an environment awash with addictive gambling products. We can see the impact across the population: late last year, the Gambling Commission released data estimating that 2.5% of adults in Great Britain were experiencing ‘problem gambling’. This represents a huge number of people who are gambling to a degree that compromises, disrupts or damages their lives in some way. These rates of harm increase when we look at specific gambling methods; for instance, 8.5% of people who participate in online gambling on slots, casino or bingo games experience ‘problem gambling’.
There is an urgent need to move away from understanding gambling harms such as debt and relationship breakdown as the result of a ‘decision’ someone makes — or as an individual’s fault— and rather as a relationship between mental, social and financial wellbeing. We need to address and disrupt this link. Updating our view of gambling harms through a mental health lens aligns with the latest research on gambling, addiction and mental health but also makes for a kinder and more understanding society for people experiencing it.
The ecosystem of gambling-related harm
Far from gambling harms being the result of individuals who are unable to ‘gamble responsibly’, there is a vast ecosystem of different organisations and systems that maintain and prolong gambling harms – the size of this cannot be underestimated.
When we think about support for people experiencing gambling harms, we often think of support networks and gambling and mental health services. However, financial service providers have some of the best insight into their customers’ experience of gambling harms and are well-placed to intervene in a timely and meaningful way. In a world where gambling harms can be highly stigmatised, with people often keeping their experiences to themselves for years, bank transaction data provides one of the clearest pictures available of someone’s gambling behaviours.
Over the next few years, the Gambling Harms Action Lab (GHAL), funded by the Gambling Commission, will be working in partnership with financial service providers to test methods and tools to tackle gambling harms.
As a key part of this work, we’ll be growing representation of gambling harms lived experience in our Research Community to ensure all our work is grounded in people’s thoughts and experiences. I’m really looking forward to working in this direct, innovative and collaborative way to see real change happen.
Reach out
If you work for a financial service provider interested in the Gambling Harms Action Lab please get in touch. And if you have experience of gambling harms and want to join the Research Community to inform us about our work on gambling harms – please reach out. We need to hear from you! Reach me on: [email protected]
If you or someone you know needs help or advice with gambling please visit the Get Help page.