Dr. Crystal Fulton:

There was discovery involved - a family member discovered that their child had been gambling or often a wife discovering a husband's gambling. There were not as many women in my study. It is difficult for women to come forward. In Ireland, it is difficult to say that one is female and one has a gambling problem. Three of the recovering gamblers were women, also of different age groups and different socioeconomic backgrounds.

They come from different backgrounds and genders. There would always be this point, regardless of who it was, that this gambling was discovered. This puts a significant strain on their relationship with their partner, their family or whoever. For children, they might witness their parents fighting a lot. We had examples of children, by which I mean adult children, telling us that their memory is of their parents fighting about money. Then there were the spouses who, as I said, thought they had marital difficulties, and really what was going on is the husband or partner would start an argument so that he could go away and be left alone in isolation to gamble. It is a lot more complex than we realise.