Bereaved families demand investigation of every UK gambling-linked suicide

Despite an estimated 400 such deaths in England a year, charity claims regulator has looked at only two since 2015

On a summer’s day in 2015, mathematics graduate Joshua Jones put on his suit and headed to his gleaming office block overlooking the River Thames in London.

It was the trainee accountant’s day off, but he was in turmoil after gambling away most of his monthly pay and an annual bonus. He told a friend he needed to “pop into the office”.

He took the lift to the top floor of the block in the early evening and jumped to his death. He was 23.

Speaking this weekend, Martin Jones, 72, Joshua’s father, said: “To people who worked with him, he was the life and soul of the party, but he was living a double life as a gambler. He felt despair that he could not control the addiction.”

On Wednesday in Westminster, Jones’s parents, Martin and Kim, will meet other families in their position, relative of 18 young people who lost their lives while struggling with devastating gambling addictions.

It will be the largest gathering in the UK of people bereaved by gambling, and the families will call on the government for independent investigations into deaths linked to the betting industry.

A Public Health England study published in September estimated that there are more than 409 suicides a year in England associated with problem gambling. It is the first time an official estimate has been made of the number of deaths.

Liz and Charles Ritchie founded the Gambling with Lives charity after their son, Jack, took his life in November 2017 because of a gambling addiction. They have been campaigning for years for the government to acknowledge the scale of the problem. The charity is organising this week’s event.Charles said: “When Jack died we were seeking out and finding other families who had lost a child. We started to ask how many people were dying. And nobody could tell us.”The Ritchies did their own research and estimated that there were between 250 and 650 gambling-related suicides in the UK each year. They have welcomed the official […]

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