Gambling disorder and suicidality within the UK: an analysis investigating mental health and gambling severity as risk factors to suicidality

Kathryn J. Roberts, Neil Smith, Henrietta Bowden-Jones and Survjit Cheeta

International Gambling Studies, 2017, vol. 17, issue 1, 51-64

Abstract: Greater severities of gambling behaviour and poorer mental health have been identified in the literature as risk factors for suicidality within gambling disorder (GD) populations. This is the first known study within the UK to use empirical data, taken from a UK treatment clinic for GD (National Problem Gambling Clinic, UK) to explore the associations between current suicidality (thoughts and plans) and measures assessing gambling severity and mental health. Self-report data from 122 participants were collected during the intake process at the clinic through a variety of methods including the use of questionnaires and a standardized 90-minute interview with a psychologist. Reported suicidality was high (current suicidal thoughts [28.7%] and plans [6.6%]), yet only one measure of gambling severity (estimated total losses) was found to be inversely associated with suicidality. Indices of poorer mental health were found to have a greater association with suicidality than measures of gambling severity, and a logistic regression analysis identified depressive symptomology and a history of psychiatric disorder in the participants’ family as significant factors associated with suicidality. Overall, within GD populations, factors associated with poorer mental health rather than gambling severity are seemingly a greater risk factor in patients with suicidality.

Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14459795.2016.1257648 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:intgms:v:17:y:2017:i:1:p:51-64

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RIGS20

DOI: 10.1080/14459795.2016.1257648

Access Statistics for this article

International Gambling Studies is currently edited by Katie Donnelly, David Marshall, Bronwyn Stuart, Alex Blaszczynski and Jan McMillen

More articles in International Gambling Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().