Chris Pitt visits the Gordon Moody Association
IT’S ANONYMOUS. FROM the outside it’s a normal semi-detached house somewhere in the West Midlands town of Dudley. Yet behind its doors lies an organisation that serves as a safety net for people with severe gambling addictions.
The anonymity is both deliberate and important. Besides being in a residential area, its inhabitants sometimes owe substantial amounts of money, not always to reliable sources.
Founded as a charity in 1971, the Gordon Moody Association provides specialised support and treatment to the most severely addicted gamblers. There are two facilities, one in Beckenham, Kent, the other in Dudley which opened at its original site in the early 1990s but moved to its present location in 1996.
They help to rehabilitate compulsive gamblers through residential treatment programmes, online and outreach services. They provide advice, education and therapeutic support to problem gamblers and to those affected by their actions.
Unlike those dependent on a substance-based addiction, such as drugs or alcohol, there are no outwardly visible signs of an addicted gambler, who may thus continue feeding their addiction until the money runs out without it being physically detectable.
“It has to be appreciated that a gambling addiction is a behavioural addiction as opposed to somebody ingesting a substance,” says Ruth Champion, the Association’s director of therapeutic services. “Our approach to treatment is based on that premise and we look at the reasons why they were using that behaviour. If we can get underneath and find the source problem, then we can help them so they don’t need to gamble because we’ve given them other coping techniques.
“Because of that we have to deal holistically, so when somebody comes in it’s not a case of just talking about the gambling, you have to talk about every aspect of their life, how they developed into who they are. We look at everything about them.”
There is no psychological stop point for addicted gamblers, no limits to which they are able to subject themselves.
“As long as they can get their hands on money, they can gamble,” says Ruth. “It’s quite different from a substance. With substances you will get to a certain point where the body will rebel whereas you don’t get that with gambling.
“Many of the people who end up with us have come to a point where they cannot cope anymore with the consequences. It’s the consequences of that addiction that starts making them think they can’t do it anymore because they’re losing their family, their home, their job.
“Everybody has got their own rock bottom. For some it might be that they don’t hit rock bottom until they end up in prison.”
THESE ARE PEOPLE from all walks of life. Most will have started gambling as a social pastime which progressed, sometimes quickly, sometimes over a period of years, to them using gambling as a means to escape.
According to analysis provided in the Gordon Moody Association’s ‘Impact Report’, which gives a snapshot of those people who attended the residential programme during 2011/12, the majority of money gambled was not money earned through employment, the source being more likely to have been either debt to credit companies, money gained through criminal acts or borrowed/taken from their families.
If a drug addict steals money to buy drugs, they know the money cannot be replaced. However, addicted gamblers who have stolen money and lost it will convince themselves that by stealing again they can gamble their way out of trouble, win back their losses and replace the money they stole. They operate in a fantasy world of self-delusion, believing that the very thing that caused the problem is the only solution.
“They get caught in a cycle,” Ruth explains. “If they were working and trying to find a more rational way of clearing their debt they probably wouldn’t be able to pay it back. It gets to the point where gambling is potentially the only way they can do it with that one big win, and that reinforces the need to do what they do.”
What was once a nine-month residential treatment programme has over the years been condensed into one lasting 14 weeks, including an initial two-week assessment period. However, all aspects of the original model are still carried out.
“There are a lot of educational groups where people are taught about their addiction and the mechanics of it,” says Ruth. “How they think, how they feel, how they behave is all linked into that. We would essentially be looking at the human of today, helping them to secure today without gambling.
“We take them from their very first memory to the day they came in. We get information about family background, where and how they grew up, how they developed their coping techniques, behavioural patterns throughout their life, a decision they made perhaps 20 years ago and what happened from that. It’s a very intense assessment and a lot of the action plan, the goals they’re working towards, the individual part of the treatment plan, stems from that.”
When a person joins a residential programme at one of the Gordon Moody Association houses they are no longer able to involve themselves in the very activity from which they derived their addiction. That can manifest itself into a variety of reactions ranging through guilt, remorse, depression and panic attacks.
“Some of the behaviours are quite complex when they first come in,” observes Ruth. “We have a two-week assessment period for that very reason, because we appreciate that if we started doing therapy with them straightaway a lot of them wouldn’t manage.
“It is a very stressful life when they’re living actively within a gambling addiction. Their mind is working 100 miles an hour so it takes a while for them to come down. They might be irritable, they get frustrated very quickly, anxiety, panic attacks – it depends on the individual but we get a whole remit of those behaviours.
“Over a period of time, when they start engaging and start to slow down to really take on board the things that they’ve done, the way they’ve behaved, guilt becomes a huge factor because, when they’re living with such extreme mood swings, there may be people who they love dearly that they’ve treated appallingly. Quite a few will say ‘I became this monster; I became this person I could no longer identify with’.
“There are lots of things that they’ve done that they have to come to terms with. When they’re not in that frame of mind, when they come out into a ‘normal’ frame of mind where they’re seeing things rationally and they start to look at some of their behaviours, there are a lot of head in hands moments.”
It is estimated that around one-third of people who receive residential treatment are unemployed and homeless. However, the Association is seeing an increasing number of people who are still in work, with their employers allowing them to attend in order to sort out their problem, something that would not have been feasible with a nine month programme.
Sometimes individuals refer themselves whereas others are referred by friends, family, probation, social or health workers.
It’s not for everyone. It can be a highly emotional, intrusive and demanding process. That two-week assessment period is vital for gauging a person’s suitability. If accepted, they face a huge commitment: a 12-week treatment programme, living in a community, away from family, friends, work and, crucially, away from gambling.
“Essentially it’s their willingness to engage with us,” says Ruth of the attributes that are required. “We would expect them not to deal with things in the most appropriate way, we’d expect a certain amount of rudeness, but if they’re willing to work with us and prepared to go through the process, that’s the underlying thing we want to see.
“Sometimes people apply to come to us when they’re not quite ready. When they get here and comprehend what’s involved – and it is a difficult process – some of them will make the choice to leave.
“It can be a pressure cooker when you’re living in a community with such intense emotional work going on. Equally, it can be so positive because you’re surrounded by people who really know and understand the process that you’re going through.”
JUST AS A reformed alcoholic being only one drink removed from relapsing, an addicted gambler is never truly cured – temptation is always one bet away. However, those who do relapse are not necessarily viewed as failures.
“Once people have got to the point where they’ve needed to come here they would never be able to gamble in a controlled way,” says Ruth. “We give them coping techniques that enable them to not use gambling to deal with life.
“It’s about understanding the nature of the people we have here, the devastation they were causing before they went into treatment, the abnormal lifestyle they were living that they’d created for themselves.
“If they can function on a day-to-day basis and lead a productive lifestyle, if they’ve lapsed and then sought our help to talk about it and didn’t create mayhem, then that is still a success. It’s a measure of where their journey started.
“When somebody comes here, we develop a relationship with their friends and family through the support worker who is working with them. We see the importance of the support network as being vital to a person’s long-term recovery.
“We have a friends and family group in our online Gambling Therapy service and also an educational type group of friends and family which we’re piloting here, so that people who have somebody in this project can log onto a weekly group where they’ll be looking at the kind of work that they’re doing that week.
“Even in the best of relationships the individual will often find it difficult when they get on the phone to fully verbalise on what they’ve been doing and how they feel about it. We’re hoping that if the family have an understanding of the process that they’ve been through, it will help that support.”
Living with other residents, people with the same addiction, in a therapeutic community can motivate an individual to reflect on their relationships with ‘significant others’ and help them change the way they interact.
It’s also a place where lifelong friendships can be forged out of adversity, friendships that can also be an effective long-term therapy strategy. That’s something which is wholly encouraged by the Gordon Moody Association.
Observes Ruth: “We realise that people, through living with gambling, build up quite a negative life. What relationships they did have with people around them are fractured and they’re quite often left with people who reinforce their gambling lifestyle, so to have friends who are in the same situation, in recovery, people who understand, can be very supportive.”
DURING THE PERIOD April 2011 to March 2012 a total of 85 people received residential treatment at the Gordon Moody Association’s Beckenham and Dudley projects. There is often a waiting list.
Previously known as Gordon House, it became the Gordon Moody Association in 2008. Elaine Smethurst has been its managing director since October 2011. She heads a combined total of 18 staff, some of whom are part-time.
Elaine Smethurst MD of the Gordon Moody Association
“It had been a registered charity since its inception but only became an incorporated company in 2008,” she explains. “There was also a view that Gordon House sounded like a purely residential service. The trustees at the time wanted to make it more inclusive, a wider name that would allow us to provide an online service and to provide a non-residential women’s service.”
The cost of a residential treatment programme is approximately £10,000 per resident and there is always pressure to identify ways of ensuring best practice.
The charity’s primary source of funding is the Responsible Gambling Trust, who collect donations from the gambling industry and act as a broker, supplying grants for support providers such as GamCare and the Gordon Moody Association.
That covers the cost of the treatment but not the accommodation costs, which comes from residents, most of whom are able to access state benefits, meaning that it is mostly paid for by way of housing benefits.
Occasionally residents will supply their own funding, either through their employers funding their stay, or their family paying for them, but for those unable to pay for treatment there are no direct costs.
There are also occasional donations and Elaine is seeking to attract more support from that quarter, including from individuals who have benefitted from the programme in the past.
She acknowledges, however, the difficulty of being able to go directly to the gambling industry for help, as much of that industry already makes contributions via the Responsible Gambling Trust.
THE ASSOCIATION OPERATES an international online Gambling Therapy service, www.gamblingtherapy.org, formed eight years ago. Between April 1, 2011 and March 31, 2012, its website received 482,993 visitors, an average of 1,323 visits per day, originating from 215 countries.
Housed in the Dudley building, it is run by a team of three – a head of gambling therapy, a clinical services manager and a senior online advisor – plus some 20 volunteers including former addicts and people able to speak other languages.
Support groups both peer-led and moderated by trained counsellors are delivered using a chat room function which allows up to ten members to engage in a discussion at any one time. There is also a one-to-one helpline support service delivered via a chat function similar to MSN and forums where people can post comments and read the posts of others. Its resources database contains details of 561 support organisations in 244 countries.
“It is primarily aimed at gamblers overseas rather than in the UK,” says Elaine. “One of the major things we’re able to offer is support in languages other than English.
“Where it does apply to the UK is for people who’ve been through the programme, ex-residents, and people who want to find out about us and want to come in.”
Asia would seem an obvious region for high density of problem gamblers but Elaine counters that general assumption.
“It’s a question we’re often asked. However, we don’t see particularly high numbers coming from Asia. That’s partly cultural in that the problems are contained within the families rather than being something for which people seek outside help, but also it’s partly to do with language.
“For Chinese people we do have both Cantonese and Mandarin available on the site and we do support people who speak those languages. But Australia, New Zealand and the United States are all English language speaking countries so that is probably the biggest area.
“It’s a global service yet it’s basically run from an office in Dudley with a team of three plus a group of volunteers. It’s a very lean operation but one that does a lot of good work.”
In addition, the Association’s Outreach Support Service programme was instigated in 2004, providing individual telephone support, face-to-face service and group support sessions at each of the residential centres for those able to travel. There are also halfway houses for those who have completed the programme and are not able or ready to live independently.
Online support is facilitated by an internet counselling service hosted on the Gambling Therapy website. This provides confidential counselling for those with access to the necessary computer equipment. There is also a text service to those without such access or those preferring total anonymity.
THE INCREASED POPULARITY of gambling during the last five years is widely considered to have led to an increase in the number of people affected by a gambling dependency.
Its continued expansion has, unsurprisingly, been accompanied by a rise in the number of females succumbing to gambling addictions, yet the Gordon Moody Association is a male-only project, having had its funding for its hitherto successful four-bed female project, opened in 2002, withdrawn seven years later.
“We have clearly identified that this is a gap in our service,” says Elaine, “so we have put together a proposal for a women’s service to be piloted next year in conjunction with psychotherapist Liz Karter, author of the book ‘Women and Problem Gambling’.
“It won’t be wholly residential because one of the issues (with the previous female project) was that a lot of women are unable to leave their home lives behind to attend a three-month residential service. Often there are children involved. The proposal is to have a combination of a short three-night four-day residential stay at the beginning followed by weekly counselling sessions and a final weekend event three or four months later.”
A totally different approach is required to dealing with male and female gamblers, a fact recognised by Ruth Champion, the Association’s director of therapeutic services.
“When men come into treatment you have to open them up to the emotional process. Women come in very open and you have to close them down. From the very start of treatment you’re working from a very different perspective. Women generally are more emotional and will talk and will connect on that level.
“A lot of the issues in connection to gambling are very similar in terms of how they got into it but some of the additional issues about which you’d be dealing with women would be more complex.”
HAVING A WOMEN’S service up and running is just one of a series of ‘things to do’ on Elaine’s shopping list.
“The shopping list is pretty long,” she says.
“Firstly, to increase the number of bed spaces. We currently have 18 in total in Dudley and Beckenham which, given the anticipated long-term demand, would be best served by at least one other location.
“We’re looking at delivering training to other professionals because there’s quite a lot of co-morbidity so people who’ve got a gambling addiction might also have some other issues they need to be helped with, such as alcoholism, drug abuse, or a mental health issue. We’re not geared up to deliver a service for those problems but if we could deliver training to the professionals who are dealing with those problems they would have a better knowledge and understanding of gambling addiction. They would have that broader educational remit.
“We’re also looking at reintroducing counselling on site. We want to be able to provide a wider support for individuals and counselling is certainly a part of that.
“We are hugely supportive of GamCare’s project of looking at the effect of gambling on young people, and while our particular focus is not on prevention, if we could work with younger people – the minimum age at the moment is eighteen – it might be that we could support people who’ve developed a problem at an early age.
“Also, there’s the possibility of having a drop-in day centre for people in the community, for friends and family of problem gamblers.
“Evaluation is key to demonstrating to potential support funders what we should be doing and that what we’re doing now is the most effective thing we could be doing. But without proper evaluation we can’t really know that, so we need to get on top of understanding how it works, what works, and what could work better.”
In contrast to the façade of anonymity at its inconspicuous property in Dudley, the Gordon Moody Association is actively seeking publicity.
“We want to raise our profile, making people aware that we exist and making people aware that they can seek help from us,” says Elaine.
“But the main thing is to continue to deliver the residential service because we are the only charity delivering such a service. Although there are questions continually about the expense of delivering a 12- or 14-week programme, we feel it’s absolutely essential that, for those who have a severe addiction, something like this continues to exist.”