Established 2026 · Registered UK therapists
UK Gambling Therapy is a UK therapy practice for gambling harm. We work with people who gamble, and with the partners, parents and children living with the consequences. Confidential, evidence-based, and completely independent of the gambling industry.
Independent by design
Start here
Every commercial gambling product is built to return less than it takes, over time, with certainty. A losing run is not bad luck being corrected. It is the product working exactly as designed.
Near misses light up the brain almost like wins. Products are engineered around that fact. The urge to win it back is manufactured, and knowing that is the beginning of dismantling it.
Nobody makes good decisions at 2am after a loss. Self-exclusion, bank blocks and blocking software work because they take the decision out of the worst possible moment.
Almost everyone we see describes the hiding as heavier than the losses. Disclosure, done once and properly supported, is usually the turning point rather than the disaster people expect.
How we help
Every route begins with the same free 20-minute call. We recommend the programme that fits — including recommending a free service instead of us, when that is the honest answer.
01
For the person who gambles
A structured course of individual therapy that starts with stabilising the immediate financial and emotional damage, then works back through the beliefs and habits that keep the cycle turning.
What happens in this programme02
For the people affected by someone else’s gambling
Gambling harm rarely stops at one person. This programme is for partners, parents and adult children who are carrying the financial and emotional aftermath — whether or not the person gambling is ready for help.
What happens in this programme03
For people who have already begun
A clinician-led closed group for people who have had a period of abstinence and want to protect it. Groups are small, closed for the full eight weeks, and never open to drop-ins.
What happens in this programme04
For anyone who has finished a programme with us
Recovery is not a finish line. Aftercare keeps a clinician in your calendar at a low frequency, and gives you a same-week appointment if something slips.
What happens in this programmeOur approach
We practise a small number of approaches properly rather than a long list badly. Each one does a specific job at a specific point in the work.
CBT
The most extensively evidenced psychological treatment for gambling disorder.
MI
Designed for ambivalence — the state most people arrive in.
Systemic
Treats the household, not only the individual.
MBRP
Targets the urge itself rather than the story around it.
Financial
Not therapy, but recovery rarely holds without it.
Free and completely private
Nine questions, two minutes, no email address and no result screen anybody else will see. The self-check runs entirely inside your browser — nothing you tap is sent to us, stored, logged or linked to you in any way.
Start the self-checkSupport reviewed
Our clinicians review the free organisations we refer to every week — what they do well, where they fall short, and who each one actually suits. We are paid nothing by any of them.
Helpline & structured treatment
“The correct first call for almost everyone in the UK.”
National self-exclusion
“The single highest-value thirty minutes in early recovery.”
Peer fellowship
“Unmatched for frequency and continuity — and it costs nothing.”
What the work looks like
Written by our clinical team to show how therapy actually unfolds. These are illustrative composites, not real named clients — we never publish a client’s words, and we do not accept testimonials.
He had been betting in-play on football for six years and had told nobody. The first session was not about football at all — it was about the four accounts, the two credit cards and the sentence he had to say to his partner that weekend. He describes the fortnight after disclosure as the worst and most useful two weeks of his life.
Disclosure done once, fully, with support around it beats disclosure in instalments.
Composite account · man, 34, Manchester · Eleven months since the last bet
She came alone. Her son was not ready, and she had spent three years covering shortfalls and calling it helping. The work was about the difference between abandoning someone and refusing to fund the harm — a distinction she had never been given permission to make.
Affected family members are entitled to therapy in their own right, not as an accessory to someone else’s.
Composite account · woman, 52, Cardiff · Twelve sessions, family programme
Fourteen months in, a redundancy and a free-bet email put him back on an account for one evening. He used the same-week aftercare appointment on the Monday. He lost £180 and eleven months of streak — and none of the fourteen months of work.
What determines the outcome of a lapse is what happens in the following seventy-two hours.
Composite account · man, 41, Glasgow · Two years, including one lapse
Where most people begin
We will ask what has been happening and tell you honestly whether we are the right service for you. If we are not, we will tell you exactly where to go instead — We reply to every enquiry within one working day.
Prefer to stay anonymous? The National Gambling Helpline is free on 0808 8020 133, 24 hours a day.