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Suicide study finds little link with casino gambling
Associated Press
ASSOCIATED PRESS
7/15/2002 10:01 pm
Casino gambling has little correlation with suicide rates in U.S. communities with casinos, according to a new study.
The study, authored by epidemiologists at the University of California, Irvine, and published this month in the academic journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, is part of growing research into the relationship 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, editor of the journal and an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago.
So far research hasn’t been conclusive.
“The evidence is not very strong one way or the other,” Silverman said.
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 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 among others and has long had a higher suicide rate than other regions — with other areas and non-regional factors such as race, age, unemployment rates, accidental deaths and homicides.
The presence of casinos explained 1 percent of the differences in suicide rates reported by different regions. Other factors, including race and age, each showed more correlation to suicide rates.
Combining such factors explained 99 percent of the differences in suicide rates, the study found.
Previous studies already have determined that white men are more likely to commit suicide than other ethnic groups, as are older people, 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 in areas across the country, showed no apparent correlation between the two, authors said.
Areas where gambling had been introduced were compared with a “control group” of areas where gambling had never been legalized. In the 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 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.”
Associated Press
ASSOCIATED PRESS
7/15/2002 10:01 pm
Casino gambling has little correlation with suicide rates in U.S. communities with casinos, according to a new study.
The study, authored by epidemiologists at the University of California, Irvine, and published this month in the academic journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, is part of growing research into the relationship 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, editor of the journal and an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago.
So far research hasn’t been conclusive.
“The evidence is not very strong one way or the other,” Silverman said.
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 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 among others and has long had a higher suicide rate than other regions — with other areas and non-regional factors such as race, age, unemployment rates, accidental deaths and homicides.
The presence of casinos explained 1 percent of the differences in suicide rates reported by different regions. Other factors, including race and age, each showed more correlation to suicide rates.
Combining such factors explained 99 percent of the differences in suicide rates, the study found.
Previous studies already have determined that white men are more likely to commit suicide than other ethnic groups, as are older people, 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 in areas across the country, showed no apparent correlation between the two, authors said.
Areas where gambling had been introduced were compared with a “control group” of areas where gambling had never been legalized. In the 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 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.”