Friday, April 3, 1998 | 3:51 a.m.
LAS VEGAS - The suicide rate in Las Vegas rose 7.5 percent last year and the coroner blamed dashed dreams, domestic disputes and the rootlessness of Nevadans - not gambling.
"We very seldom see gambling directly attached to a suicide," Clark County coroner Ron Flud said Friday. "What we see pretty normally is the number one reason for suicides here is failed relationships."
Flud made his comments in releasing statistics showing 272 people committed suicide in the county in 1997, up from 253 in 1996. The figure is four shy of the record of 276 suicides in 1995.
Norman Black, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said there were 395 suicides in Nevada in 1995, their latest figures, for a rate of 25.8 per 100,000. That was more than double the national rate of 11.9 suicides per 100,000.
"Nevada has the highest suicide rate in the nation," said Dorothy Bryant, chief executive of the Suicide Prevention Center here. "You need to remember that our population is constantly changing. We are a very high mobility state. A lot of people in Nevada don't have roots. They have no one to turn to when they're in trouble."
Bryant, who has been with the center 28 years, said the majority of calls involve relationships, health or financial problems.
"Gambling doesn't rank high on the list," she said. "We don't see it as a major cause."
Flud agrees a key to the city's high suicide rate is the staggering growth rate in southern Nevada. The U.S. Census Bureau says Las Vegas is the fastest growth metropolitan area in the nation, with more than 5,000 newcomers per month.
"I think they see there is opportunity in Las Vegas and maybe things aren't going well where they've been," Flud said. "They come here looking for opportunities, then maybe their jobs don't work out, and they don't have the support mechanism here. They've got no one to turn to, so their problems escalate."
Flud said his office has done studies to determine if there was a pattern of suicides resulting from gambling problems.
"We found that the majority of the cases had nothing to do with gambling that we could see," Flud said.
Critics of the gambling industry have blamed it for the high number of Nevada suicides.
David Phillips, a professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego, recently completed a nationwide study that found higher numbers of suicides in cities with casinos than in those without.
Frank Fahrenkopf, president of the American Gaming Association, said there have been no studies that have shown gambling to be a primary cause of suicides.
Flud said 233 of the county's 272 victims last year were local residents and 36 were non-residents, with the residency of three unknown.
"We do see some people coming to Las Vegas for the sole reason of committing suicide," Flud said. "They fly into Las Vegas, get a hotel room, and commit suicide. Why they pick Las Vegas I don't know."
The coroner's office said 63 percent of the victims died from gunshot wounds, 13 percent overdosed on drugs, 14 percent hanged themselves and 4 percent died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Six people jumped from buildings.
The victims included nine teen-agers and 10 people over the age of 80.
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