Suicide study finds no link with gambling

By Liz Benston (contact)

Monday, July 15, 2002 | 11:07 a.m.

Casino gambling has little or no correlation with suicide rates in U.S. communities with casinos, a new study found.

The study, authored by a group of epidemiologists at the University of California, Irvine, and published this month in the academic journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, is part of a growing body of research that has not determined any strong correlation between gambling and suicide.

It also fuels a long-standing debate about whether the presence of Las Vegas-style casinos elevates the risk of suicide.

Las Vegas, which has the highest suicide rate in the nation, has been examined by suicide experts for years. The spread of legalized gambling has spurred interest in the subject beyond the halls of academia, said Morton Silverman, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago and editor in chief of the journal.

"As legislatures debate this issue, groups and others are raising issues about (whether gambling) will increase homicides (and) suicides."

So far, research hasn't been conclusive, he said.

"The evidence is not very strong one way or the other."

The study follows up a 2000 analysis by UC Irvine that found no evidence to support a connection between gambling and suicides of visitors to casino resort areas.

Researchers used two methods to look at a possible link between gambling and resident suicides.

The first method compared 1990 suicide rates for residents across 148 metropolitan areas. The analysis compared the Western Mountain region -- an area that includes Nevada along with Utah, Arizona and others and has long had a higher suicide rate than other regions of the country -- against other areas and non-regional factors such as race, age, unemployment rates, accidental deaths and homicides.

The presence of casinos explained only 1 percent of the differences in suicide rates reported by different regions. Other factors, including race and age, each showed much stronger correlations to suicide rates. Combining such factors explained 99 percent of the differences in suicide rates, the study found.

Previous studies have already determined that white men are more likely to commit suicide than other ethnic groups, as are older people, for example, said epidemiologist Kenneth Chew, one of the study's authors.

The second method, which compared suicide rates for residents before and after years in which gambling was legalized across the country, showed no apparent correlation between the two, authors said. Areas were gambling had been introduced were compared to a "control group" of areas where gambling had never been legalized.

After legalization, increases in suicide rates were detected in Atlantic County, N.J., and Harrison County, Miss., and fell in Lawrence County, S.D., Douglas-Gilpin County, Colo., and Will County, Ill. In all but Lawrence County, the post-legalization changes were statistically insignificant.

In Lawrence County, the data would support the opposite theory, that a decline in resident suicide was caused by the legalization of gambling. But that theory "doesn't make a whole lot of sense," Chew said. Further studies with a longer "before" and "after" period would need to occur to test that theory, he added.

In the control group analysis, six of the seven counties showed no changes in suicide rates before and after the legalization of gambling.

"There are more important things to look at than casino gambling" when determining the factors that affect suicide, Chew concluded.

The study defined gambling regions as those with Las Vegas-style casinos, excluding Indian casinos as well as more limited forms of gambling.

The results show the need for further study involving more sophisticated data-gathering and statistical analysis, Silverman said.

Establishing cause is difficult because so many factors contribute to suicide rates, he added.

"We may never have an absolute definitive answer because populations change and trends change."

While many studies have agreed that there is little correlation between gambling and suicide, some have come to different conclusions.

A 1997 study, considered the first large-scale and most influential analysis on the subject, supported such a link. Author David Phillips, a professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego, concluded that cities where gambling was legalized -- including Las Vegas, Reno and Atlantic City -- had suicide rates four times the average of comparably sized cities where gambling was illegal.

Three years later, however, a study by an economics professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, revealed that 3 percent of Las Vegas resident suicides between 1990 and 1999 were primarily related to gambling -- a smaller figure than might have initially been believed. Psychiatric problems, relationship issues and health concerns appeared to be far more significant influences, researcher Christian Marfels said. Marfels concluded that, like other areas of the West that have witnessed a large influx of people from across the country, Las Vegas is afloat with newcomers with no established support system to turn to for help.

LaRae Gibb, a volunteer for the Suicide Prevention Center of Clark County, agrees.

Gambling problems are sometimes brought up as an issue during counseling sessions, but they appear to be a small factor compared to other concerns such as loneliness, health problems and divorce, she said.

"If you don't have your family (nearby) or a backup, these other things don't bother you as much."