How a concerned family member, friend or member of the public can help someone with gambling problems: a Delphi consensus study

Abstract

BackgroundGambling is an enjoyable recreational pursuit for many people. However, for some it can lead to significant harms. The Delphi expert consensus method was used to develop guidelines for how a concerned family member, friend or member of the public can recognise the signs of gambling problems and support a person to change their gambling.MethodsA systematic review of websites, books and journal articles was conducted to develop a questionnaire containing items about the knowledge, skills and actions needed for supporting a person with gambling problems. These items were rated over three rounds by two international expert panels comprising people with a lived experience of gambling problems and professionals who treat people with gambling problems or research gambling problems.ResultsA total of 66 experts (34 with lived experience and 32 professionals) rated 412 helping statements according to whether they thought the statements should be included in these guidelines. There were 234 helping statements that were endorsed by at least 80 % of members of both of the expert panels. These endorsed statements were used to develop the guidelines.ConclusionTwo groups of experts were able to reach substantial consensus on how someone can recognise the signs of gambling problems and support a person to change.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40359-016-0110-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Assisting an Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person with gambling problems: a Delphi study

“…Recently, guidelines for assisting a person with gambling problems from English-speaking Western countries have been published [ 17 , 18 ]. There are some notable differences between these two sets of guidelines (see Additional file 3 for a comparison of the two sets of items).…”

“…The Round 1 survey included two types of questions – items from a previous international study to develop guidelines for assisting people with gambling problems in developed English-speaking Western countries [ 17 ] and items derived from a targeted literature search described below. The methodology of the study to develop the gambling guidelines for English-speaking Western countries is described in detail elsewhere [ 17 ]. Three hundred and forty-seven items from the previous survey that received a consensus rating of at least 50% were used in the Round 1 survey of this current study.…”

“…In line with other similar Delphi studies (e.g. [ 17 , 21 , 22 ]), the first 50 websites, 50 books and 50 journal articles were retrieved. The decision to examine the first 50 for each search term was based on a previous Delphi study that found that the quality of the resources declined rapidly after the first 50 [ 23 ].…”

“…A working group, consisting of staff from Mental Health First Aid Australia, the University of Melbourne and an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health first aid expert (who is Aboriginal) translated the results from the literature search into helping statements that were clear, actionable, and contained only one idea. These statements, plus the items from the recent Delphi study to develop guidelines for helping a person with gambling problems from a developed English-speaking Western country [ 17 ], were used to form the first of three questionnaires that were administered to the expert panel via SurveyMonkey.…”

“…A recent Delphi study was conducted to develop guidelines for how to help a friend, family member or co-worker who had gambling problems [ 17 , 18 ]. This study identified the signs that may indicate a person has a gambling problem and outlines what a person needs to know and do to help them.…”