People struggling with gambling addictions face a significantly higher risk of suicide according to a new study conducted by Lund University in Sweden.
The study more than 2,000 people with gambling disorders, finding a significantly elevated risk of suicide among participants compared with the general population over an 11-year period. It found that suicide rates increased 19 times among men between the ages of 20 and 49 if they had a gambling problem and by 15 times among men and women of all ages.
The authors of the research said that while the causes of suicide were complex and likely to involve more than one factor, their work indicated gambling disorders were associated with far higher than average rates of suicide.
“To us it’s not a surprising result based on what we see and hear in the clinical setting,” said Anders Hakansson, professor of addiction medicine at Lund University in the report. “The causes of suicide are very likely to be multi-factoral but it’s likely that some will contribute more than others.”
He said it was hard to isolate the role played by gambling since there may be multiple overlapping factors that may be present in subjects who take their own life.
“It’s not difficult to argue that gambling contributes very strongly to suicidal thinking, especially when debts are so severe that suicide becomes part of the solution a person thinks about in that kind of crisis, with the feeling of what you have caused to your family members.”
