Suicide prevention and crisis care in gambling support teams, with Christina Theophilos

Customer support and VIP managers are often the first to notice a player in serious distress, yet the industry rarely talks about suicide. Christina Theophilos, a safer gambling and mental health specialist, spoke with host Šimon Vincze about the suicide prevention course she created, now available on Casino Guru Academy.

In this episode

• She says she designed the course because staff are not trained enough, and that most regulations across the globe do not require suicide prevention training for customer-facing staff (11:41).

• Her advice is never to leave one support agent alone on a threat: have two to three people on call, one calling the police and one keeping the player talking, then debrief (15:05, 15:20).

• Test outbound emergency calls and verify support links before a crisis, including for markets where gambling is prohibited but operators still run (15:50).

• She names shame and hopelessness as the two main risk factors to listen for, and says the first step with an unclear threat is to ask what the player means (20:15).

• The most controversial part is the goodwill gesture: giving money to a player in crisis only after their account is closed and they have self-excluded, which drew push-back even from friends in the industry (21:31, 22:13, 25:16).

• Her three wishes: risk detection tools everywhere, human intervention linked to harm markers, and operators giving 0.1% to research and treatment (28:32, 28:58, 29:44).

Episode from Safer Gambling Talks with Šimon Vincze by Casino Guru News, published on YouTube.