The UK Armed Forces Veterans’ Health and Gambling Study is a Forces in Mind Trust–funded project to examine gambling attitudes and behaviour, mental health, and healthcare utilisation in armed forces veterans and non-veterans from the UK and Northern Ireland.
International evidence points to increased risk of gambling-related harm in veterans, particularly during transition back to “Civvy Street” (Levy & Tracy, 2018, J Gambl Stud).
Previously, we have shown that community-dwelling English veterans are at up to eight times more likely to exhibit problem gambling than non-veterans (Roberts et al., 2018) and that this gambling-related harm extends to one’s family (Dighton et al., 2018).
Significantly higher prevalence of problem gambling in UK veterans than in non-veterans (Dighton et al., 2018; Roberts et al. (2018)
Our study is therefore the first UK-wide survey of its kind to investigate gambling-related harm and mental health in veterans and to estimate the associated healthcare costs of such harm. It will complete in 2021 and data collection will run from 2019.
UK Armed Forces Veterans' Health and Gambling Study 