While seen by many as a form of leisure and recreation, gambling can have serious repercussions for individuals, families, and society as a whole. The harmful effects of gambling have been studied for decades to attempt to understand individual differences in gambling engagement and the life- course of gamblingrelated problems. In this publication, we present a comprehensive, internationally relevant conceptual framework of “harmful gambling” that moves beyond a symptoms-based view of harm and addresses a broad set of factors related to population risk, community and societal effects. Interactive factors represented in the framework represent major themes in gambling that range from specific (gambling environment, exposure, types, and resources) to general (cultural, social, psychological, and biological). This framework has been created by international and interdisciplinary experts from a variety of stakeholder perspectives - including researchers, treatment providers, operators, policy makers, and individuals and their families - to facilitate an understanding of harmful gambling. It not only reflects the state of knowledge as it relates to factors influencing harmful gambling, but also acts to guide the development of future research programs and educate policy makers on issues related to harmful gambling. The Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre (Guelph, Ontario, Canada) has facilitated the development of the Conceptual Framework of Harmful Gambling and is committed to updating it over time.
