Study links gambling, suicide

      Opponents of legalized gambling found fresh ammunition Tuesday in a study by a California researcher who linked the spread of casinos with high suicide rates in Las Vegas, Reno and Atlantic City, N.J..
      David Phillips, a professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego, compared suicide statistics nationwide and traced significantly higher numbers in cities with casinos than in those without.
      "It is not a coincidence that Las Vegas, the premier gambling center in the United States, displays the highest levels of suicide in the nation," Phillips said. "That makes it plausible that gambling and suicide are linked."
      The clincher, he said, is evidence that suicides shot up in Atlantic City in the first few years after gambling was legalized in that seaside resort: "That was quite telling, I thought."
      The study was published in the December issue of Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, the official journal of the American Association of Suicidology.
      It comes on the heels of a Harvard University study that found as many as seven out of 100 Americans and Canadians have gambling problems, a figure that researchers said has climbed steadily with the opening of casinos.
      Bernie Horn, a spokesman for the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, said Phillips' study defines yet another social cost of the growing number of legal casinos throughout the country.
      "These are areas where people have the opportunity to gamble very frequently," he said. "The result is probably very high levels of gambling addiction, which leads to high levels of suicide."
      Frank Fahrenkopf, president of the American Gaming Association, challenged the study, suggesting high suicide rates in Nevada fit into recent trends throughout the West, where he said people find themselves isolated, without friends and personal support.
      But a Las Vegas psychologist who works with problem gamblers said Phillips' findings are no surprise.
      "It confirms something we knew," said Robert Hunter. "There is a percentage of people who can't handle gambling and those are the people who end up killing themselves. It's no secret and it's kind of a no-brainer that people with serious gambling problems attempt suicide. It's no leap to say in cities where it's legal, where it's been around awhile, would have higher rates."
      Phillips said he had no political ax to grind when he decided to study suicide and gambling -- "I don't think researchers should try to make policy." He launched the project after hearing phone operators from a gambling hot line talk about the desperate, suicidal tone in callers' voices.
      He used computers to analyze the causes of death in Clark County, Washoe County and Atlantic County, the three biggest gaming centers in the United States.
      He said he did not attempt to look at suicide rates in other areas where casinos have opened because not enough information was yet available.
      Starting with suicide statistics from 1989-91 -- three years that straddled the 1990 U.S. Census -- Phillips found:
      --In Las Vegas, where there should have been 310 suicides based on a comparison of similar cities in five neighboring states, 497 residents killed themselves.
      --In Reno, where 111 suicides were expected, 166 people took their own lives.
      --In Atlantic City, 64 people killed themselves when 42 were expected.
      Phillips also studied suicide rates of visitors to the three cities, using death records from 1982-88. In Las Vegas, 161 tourists committed suicide, nearly three times the 63 visitor suicides that would have been expected.
      In Reno, the actual number was 55, compared with an expected 36.
      But it was the Atlantic City figures that Phillips said boosted his research because he was able to compare suicide rates before gambling was legalized and then after. He couldn't make the same comparison in Las Vegas or Reno because statistics weren't kept before 1931, when a state law was passed that legalized wide-open casino gambling.
      Before the casinos opened, he said, the number of suicides in Atlantic City was not significantly higher than nearby New Jersey counties. The numbers began to climb only after gambling was legalized.
      Phillips said he considered the possibility that suicide rates in the three cities were higher because suicidal people move to gambling centers, but he found no evidence to back up that theory.
      While he didn't study other gaming cities, he said his research should sound a warning to people who treat problem gamblers elsewhere.
      "Our findings raise the possibility that the recent expansion of legalized gambling and the consequent increase in gambling settings may be accompanied by an increase in U.S. suicides," he wrote in the study.
      Hunter said the gaming industry should accept the study's findings and use it to better education efforts aimed at compulsive gamblers.
      "This is a very treatable disorder," he said. "But people are so damn ignorant. They think there's nothing they can do and decide they have to die."