Gambling addiction help in Brazil

Verified helplines

Helplines and online chat

Brazil has no gambling-specific national telephone helpline. The national emotional-support line is CVV — Centro de Valorização da Vida: dial 188, free, 24 hours a day, every day, with chat and email at cvv.org.br. CVV volunteers listen and work through a crisis with you; they do not give gambling-specific counselling.

Gambling-specific support runs through the health system and peer meetings instead. The two routes that exist nationally are the Meu SUS Digital mental-health service for people who bet, described below, and Jogadores Anônimos meetings.

Self-exclusion

Brazil runs a centralised self-exclusion register, which is unusual in South America. The Plataforma Centralizada de Autoexclusão, operated by the Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas, blocks your access to all federally authorised betting houses in a single request instead of site by site.

How to register

1. Open the gov.br self-exclusion service. You need a gov.br account at prata or ouro level; a bronze account will not work, so raise the level first if needed.
2. Choose the length: a fixed term of at least one month, or an indefinite exclusion.
3. Confirm. The service is free.

The commitment binds you, not only the operators. A fixed term cannot be cancelled before it runs out. An indefinite exclusion can be lifted only after twelve months have passed.

What it does not reach: sites operating without SPA authorisation. Those are still accessible from Brazil, and no register touches them, which is why device-level blocking is worth adding on top. See blocking apps for iOS and Android and self-exclusion schemes by country.

Blocking gambling payments and sites

As of September 2026 no Brazilian bank publishes a customer-facing gambling-transaction block of the kind UK banks offer. There is no toggle to switch off gambling payments on your account.

The rules do control where the money can land. Under Portaria SPA/MF nº 615/2024, licensed operators must pay winnings by electronic transfer into an account registered in the bettor's own name at an institution authorised by the Banco Central. No third-party payouts, no cash.

Since 2025 the SPA also operates a “Módulo de Impedidos” inside its SIGAP system, which passes the register of Bolsa Família and BPC beneficiaries to operators so they can refuse those registrations, deposits and bets.

That leaves device and network blocking as the layer you control yourself, alongside removing saved cards and Pix keys from betting apps.

Free treatment and counselling

The clearest free route is inside the SUS app. In August 2026 the Ministério da Saúde opened a mental-health teleservice aimed specifically at people with gambling problems in Meu SUS Digital: sign in with your gov.br account, open Miniapps and choose “Agora Tem Especialistas em Saúde Mental para Quem Aposta”.

Sessions last about 50 minutes and normally run once a week, in an initial cycle of up to ten. At the end of the cycle the case is reassessed for discharge, further teleconsultations or referral to in-person care. The ministry set capacity at up to 100,000 teleconsultations a month, and relatives of people who gamble can use the service too.

For in-person specialist care, PRO-AMITI at the Instituto de Psiquiatria of the Hospital das Clínicas, FMUSP, in São Paulo treats impulse-control disorders including pathological gambling. Its published contacts are a phone line on Tuesdays 10:00–16:00, WhatsApp Monday to Friday 10:00–16:00, and email. The service does not publish its waiting time or whether places are funded, so ask when you make contact.

Support for family and friends

JOG-ANON is the Brazilian fellowship for spouses, relatives and friends of compulsive gamblers. It holds in-person meetings and takes contact by WhatsApp and email at jog-anon.com.br. It is separate from Jogadores Anônimos, which is for the person who gambles and lists meetings by region plus an online meeting on Tuesday evenings at jogadoresanonimos.com.br.

The Meu SUS Digital service described above also accepts family members, so a partner can get sessions in their own right rather than only supporting someone else's treatment.

One thing relatives cannot do in Brazil: register someone else for self-exclusion. The gov.br platform works on the person's own gov.br identity. Practical approaches are in how to help someone with a gambling addiction and signs of gambling addiction.

Gambling law and the regulator

The regulator is the Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas (SPA), part of the Ministério da Fazenda. It authorises, regulates, supervises and sanctions fixed-odds betting, lotteries, commercial promotions and philanthropic draws.

Fixed-odds betting, meaning sports betting and online casino-style games, was legalised by Lei 13.756/2018 and Lei 14.790/2023. Since 1 January 2025, only operators authorised by the SPA may operate nationally. Betting by anyone under 18 is prohibited, directly or through another person (Lei 14.790/2023, art. 26).

On scale: the Banco Central estimated that around 24 million people made at least one Pix transfer to a betting company in August 2024 (Estudo Especial nº 119, 2024). That study is the most recent official Brazilian measurement of how many people bet.