Gambling addiction help in Thailand

Verified helplines

Helplines and online chat

There is no dedicated gambling helpline in Thailand. The number people are directed to is 1323, run by the Department of Mental Health under the Ministry of Public Health. It is free, answered 24 hours a day, and confidential, and it handles stress, anxiety, low mood and loss. A gambling problem is taken as a mental health call rather than by a specialist gambling service, so it helps to say plainly at the start what the money is going on.

The Center for Gambling Studies at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Economics, funded by the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, researches gambling in Thailand and publishes national surveys. It is a research centre and does not counsel individuals.

Gamblers Anonymous lists one meeting in Thailand: an open meeting in Jomtien, near Pattaya, on Sunday evenings, arranged by email through the GA international office. Lines in other countries are in the helplines directory.

Self-exclusion

No self-exclusion register exists in Thailand — national, provincial or operator-level — as of September 2026. That follows from the legal position rather than from neglect: with almost all gambling prohibited, there are no licensed operators for a register to bind, and the government lottery has no exclusion mechanism of its own.

What is left is practical rather than official: removing saved payment methods, handing card control to someone you trust, and blocking at device level. See apps that block gambling sites for tools that need no cooperation from an operator, and self-exclusion by country for how the formal schemes work where they exist.

Blocking gambling payments and sites

In Thailand the blocking is done by the state rather than requested by the player. The Ministry of Digital Economy and Society blocks gambling URLs at scale: 362,482 gambling addresses were blocked between 1 October 2025 and 28 February 2026, out of 437,473 illegal URLs in total, according to the government's announcement of 13 March 2026. Sites reappear under new addresses, so this thins the supply rather than removing it.

Thai banks do not offer the customer-requested gambling transaction block that UK and Irish banks provide. Without that, the workable steps are the ordinary ones — separating the account you live from the one you can reach, and keeping card details off the device you gamble on. If debts have already built up, see what to do about gambling debt.

Free treatment and counselling

Treatment runs through the public health system. The Universal Coverage Scheme — the gold card, or 30-baht scheme — covers Thai citizens, and its board approved a comprehensive mental health service package on 20 August 2025 covering initial counselling, screening of people at risk and continuing follow-up, delivered both by public providers and by registered non-government providers.

Specialist psychiatric care is provided by the Department of Mental Health's own hospitals. There is no gambling-specific clinic network in Thailand, so a person with a gambling problem is seen through general psychiatric services. That is worth knowing before the first appointment: nobody will ask about gambling unless you raise it.

Support for family and friends

With no self-exclusion scheme to invoke and no gambling-specific counselling service, families in Thailand have fewer formal levers than in most countries. The 1323 line counsels family members as well as the person gambling, and it is free.

That puts more weight on the practical steps: separating finances, not covering losses, and agreeing in advance what happens with money. See how to help someone with a gambling problem and the signs of a gambling problem.

Gambling law and the regulator

The Gambling Act of 1935 is still the governing statute. It splits games into List A, which cannot be licensed at all, and List B, which the authorities may license. Playing a List A game — the schedule covering casino-type games — carries three months to three years' imprisonment and a fine of ฿500 to ฿5,000; a participant described in the Act as a customer faces up to three years, or a fine up to ฿5,000, or both. Other offences under the Act carry up to two years or ฿2,000.

The main lawful exception is the state lottery, run by the Government Lottery Office. Under a regulation issued in 2020, following the 2019 amendment to the Government Lottery Office Act, nobody under 20 may claim a lottery prize.

Casinos remain illegal. The draft Entertainment Complex Business Act, which would have licensed casinos inside integrated entertainment complexes, was withdrawn from parliament after the cabinet approved its withdrawal on 8 July 2025, citing the ministerial changes of 30 June 2025 and unresolved social concerns. No casino law has been enacted since.