Almost half a million children in England and Wales are gambling regularly, with about 55,000 estimated to have a serious problem. Suicide rates for gambling addicts are high, and gambling-related problems cause stress for individuals and families. In response, the NHS has opened its first children’s gambling clinic, offering face-to-face treatment – mostly cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

Out-of-control gambling is linked to complex individual and social problems – including stress, anxiety and other mental health issues such as bipolar disorder. CBT attempts to tackle the behaviour by dismantling some of the common beliefs and attitudes around it. Gamblers may be encouraged to set themselves realistic limits, fulfil their financial obligations before spending on betting, and to think of gambling as a form of entertainment as opposed to a means of making money.

The gambling industry sends its roots into the cracks in human beings and sucks out whatever it can

It’s all very sensible, and is surely a helpful starting point. But it fails to address the unscrupulousness of an industry that targets children by normalising risky practices, couching bets in kid-friendly video games or the deeper mental processes that might lead a person to take serious risks with their own or their family’s money and possessions.

Of course not everyone who gambles has a problem – gambling covers everything from buying a lottery ticket to risking your house in a game of roulette. Betting on anything from tennis to future Tory leaders may be seen as socially acceptable (although many religions take a dim view of any kind of betting). Problems start when gambling comes to fulfil an emotional need, or to buffer certain forms of psychic suffering.

In a sense, it often follows the same logic as physical self-harm. A sense of unbearable, free-floating anxiety may be funnelled through a self-destructive activity that converts a feeling that’s difficult to process into a palpable act. An unnameable worry becomes a nameable one – a loss or a cut.

Children and adolescents tend to be very much engaged in the tricky business of working out what to do with difficult feelings. Crying and screaming are, one expects, gradually being weeded out in favour of behaviours more conducive to peaceful coexistence. This tends not to be a smooth process. At the same time as trying to contain emotions, young people are also in the process of separating from carers, gradually teetering towards independence. Less socially acceptable feelings, such as anger, aggression and envy – not to mention all the sexual stuff – need to be dealt with, and the means might not always be obvious. And all this may be happening in a context of difficulties at school, at home, with friends, in the wider world.

It’s hardly surprising that dangerous activities that can be enacted furtively might promise to ameliorate the problem. Like cutting, gambling can be an attack, albeit one that may never be felt by the person it’s ultimately aimed at. It can be a manifestation of anger, panic or frustration turned inwards as it seems to have nowhere else acceptable to go.

NHS to open first gambling clinic for children Read more

Given all this, it’s tragic and horrifying to think that there is an industry built around exploiting the situation. In an effort to make sure people keep gambling, IT consultants and psychologists are hard at work trying to understand what makes them stop playing games and turn away from their screens. The gaming industries become ever more sophisticated at reeling people in and keeping them there, inventing ever more unputdownable technologies to ensure an endless stream of funds. Like junk food, cigarettes, and every other offering that promises pleasure and delivers harm, the gambling industry sends its roots into the cracks in human beings and sucks out whatever it can.

It’s great that the NHS recognises the scale of the problem but there’s still the question of how best to respond to it. While it may simply be helpful to offer people a space in which their difficulties will be heard, named and responded to, you might also wonder whether quick, commonsense-based practices such as CBT are up to the job. As the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ web page on gambling treatments says in response to the question of how CBT compares with other treatments: “We don’t know yet – there have not been enough large studies to be clear about this.”

It seems to be yet another iteration of the classic contemporary conundrum. Society offers you “cures” – empty satisfactions that soon become symptoms – then offers you simplistic treatments to cure you of those failed cures. Children with gambling problems are no doubt attempting to buffer some of the devastating difficulties of growing up, and while it’s great that they have a space to speak about it, it will surely take more than a few words of general wisdom to remove them from the grip of an addiction whose business it is to make sure that they keep coughing up.

• Anouchka Grose is a psychoanalyst and author

• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org