Free Mental Health Workshops at Auckland Medical Clinic

In August 2024, Botany Junction Medical Centre in east Auckland launched a six-week psychoeducation programme specifically designed for adults who identified habitual online gambling as a source of psychological stress. The initiative brought together general practitioners, a registered clinical psychologist, and a financial counsellor to deliver structured group sessions every Tuesday evening from 6:30 pm. The programme drew 34 participants across its two cohorts, ranging in age from 26 to 61, the majority of whom were referred by their own GPs following routine mental health check-ins. As part of the broader outreach effort, the clinic partnered with representatives from the online gambling sector — including casoola online casino — to better understand what responsible-play messaging looks like from an operator's perspective and how medical professionals can integrate that language into patient conversations.

The workshop series, titled "Screen, Stake, Stress," was developed over four months by Dr Priya Nair, a GP at Botany Junction Medical Centre with a specialist interest in behavioural health, alongside clinical psychologist Marcus Tūhoe, who has worked with problem gambling services in South Auckland since 2018. Their central observation, drawn from patient consultations in 2023, was that a growing number of patients were reporting anxiety and sleep disruption linked not to pathological gambling disorder, as defined clinically, but to a grey zone of frequent, habitual online gambling that fell below diagnostic thresholds yet still produced measurable stress responses.

What the Programme Actually Covered

Each of the six Tuesday sessions followed a fixed structure: a 20-minute psychoeducation segment, a 30-minute facilitated group discussion, and a 15-minute one-on-one check-in available for participants who requested it. Topics rotated across the six weeks and included cognitive distortions common in gambling behaviour, the neuroscience of variable reward schedules, budgeting and financial boundary-setting, sleep hygiene as it relates to late-night screen use, and strategies for communicating gambling habits to partners or family members without shame. The sixth and final session included a guest appearance from a peer support worker from the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand, who shared his own recovery narrative.

Participants completed pre- and post-programme questionnaires using the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale and a modified version of the Victorian Gambling Screen. Across both cohorts, average K10 scores dropped from 24.1 at intake to 17.6 at programme completion — a reduction that Dr Nair described as "meaningful but not surprising, given the structured peer environment." Twelve participants reported having voluntarily reduced their weekly gambling expenditure by the end of the programme, with six stating they had deactivated accounts on at least one online platform.

The Role of Industry Engagement

One of the more unusual aspects of the programme was the decision to invite input from online casino operators during the curriculum design phase. Marcus Tūhoe explained that the team wanted the psychoeducation content to reflect the actual mechanics of online gambling products rather than relying on generalised descriptions that patients often found unrealistic or condescending. A representative from Casoola online casino participated in two design consultations in May 2024, providing documentation of the platform's existing responsible gambling tools, including session time limits, deposit caps, and self-exclusion pathways. The casino operates as a licensed online gambling platform and has, according to its public documentation, maintained a dedicated responsible gaming section since its launch. The consultation was non-commercial: no funding passed between the clinic and the operator, and the operator had no influence over the clinical content of the workshops.

"We were not there to endorse anyone's product," said Tūhoe in an interview with the clinic's internal newsletter published in October 2024. "We wanted to know what tools already exist inside these platforms so that we could teach our patients to actually use them, rather than just telling them to 'gamble less,' which is advice that tends to go nowhere without a practical mechanism attached to it."

Dr Nair echoed this position, noting that several participants had been unaware that the online casino platforms they used regularly offered opt-in spending limits or cool-off periods. "For at least eight of our participants, the single most impactful moment in the programme was learning that a feature they could activate in under two minutes had existed on their preferred platform the entire time," she said.

Outcomes and Next Steps

The clinic submitted a summary report to the Auckland Regional Public Health Service in November 2024, recommending that a similar model be trialled at two additional South Auckland medical practices in 2025. The report noted that the six-week format was manageable within existing GP infrastructure without requiring dedicated addiction services funding, which the clinic identified as a significant scalability advantage.

Participant feedback collected anonymously at the end of the programme was largely positive. Of 31 respondents, 27 rated the programme as "useful" or "very useful," and 29 said they would recommend it to someone in a similar situation. Several participants noted that the non-judgmental framing of gambling — as a behaviour existing on a spectrum rather than as a binary disorder — made them more willing to engage honestly during group discussions.

The programme did not recruit through advertising and was not publicly promoted. Referrals came exclusively through the clinic's GP network and one local pharmacist. Dr Nair said this was a deliberate choice, intended to keep cohort sizes small enough for genuine group cohesion. She indicated that if the model expands in 2025, referral pathways may be widened to include school counsellors and community health workers, though the clinical oversight structure would remain anchored in primary care.

Botany Junction Medical Centre serves a catchment area with high ethnic diversity and above-average rates of financial hardship relative to the Auckland average, factors that Dr Nair said informed the decision to embed financial counselling into the programme rather than treating gambling stress as a purely psychological matter. "You cannot separate the emotional component from the economic one," she said. "For most of our participants, the stress was not abstract — it was about real money and real consequences."