Recognition and responses to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in gambler’s help services

(1) ‘It’s loaded with complexity’: This theme highlighted the clinical complexity of clients who disclosed both gambling problems and IPV. 

(2) ‘The hidden nature of gambling and IPV’: This theme encompassed the stigma, shame and secrecy attached to both gambling and IPV.  

(3) ‘The big thing is putting it on the radar’: This identified a range of factors in the service context that either enabled client disclosures of IPV, or kept these hidden.  

(4) ‘It’s everyone’s business’: This theme described current approaches to inter-agency collaboration, with reference to factors that either limited or facilitated such responses to addressing IPV. Practical implications of the results for the service sector are discussed. 

The findings draw attention to the potential role of gambling help services in identifying and addressing IPV, which should comprise one small but important part of the broader multi-sector societal response to these issues. Interviews also suggested significant challenges that gambling help providers face in relation to the identification and response to IPV, and these support recommendations to strengthen the role of such services in a number of areas.