The Stranger at Home: Lived Experiences of Online Gambling Within the Family in Siirt, Türkiye

Online gambling is a growing public health concern whose harms extend to the family, yet its familial consequences remain underexplored in contexts where gambling is illegal and extended-family ties are strong. This study examined how men who gamble online perceive gambling to affect their families in Siirt, Türkiye. Using a qualitative exploratory design, in-person semi-structured interviews with nine married or previously married men who currently or formerly gambled online (recruited via purposive and snowball sampling) were analyzed with a hybrid deductive-inductive, codebook thematic analysis (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006), informed by the six phases of Braun and Clarke (2006). Four themes were identified: entry into online gambling and the experience of addiction; the internal disintegration of the nuclear family; the household’s economic collapse and drift into crime; and the extended family, stigmatization, and the cultural framing of harm. Participants perceived gambling to erode communication and trust, dispossess the household, and displace men from the provider role, while family responses followed conventional gendered lines-disrupting the material division of roles while reactivating a traditional gender order. Distinctive contextual mechanisms emerged, including the extended family’s collective debt-clearing in exchange for religious oaths and the operation of stigma through kinship networks that threatened collective family honor. Because all participants were gamblers, the findings reflect their perceptions of family impact rather than the direct experiences of affected others. The results extend a predominantly Western evidence base and underscore the need for culturally sensitive, family-inclusive support that works with existing kinship structures while protecting those most burdened.