Gambling has been described as a ‘coercive commodity’, with products designed to encourage continued engagement despite the consumer’s knowledge that this is against their best interests. Industry insiders have been quoted as seeking to maximise ‘time on device’ and encourage people to ‘play to extinction’ – i.e. to exhaust all available funds. Evidence of a relationship between gambling and suicide has emerged in several jurisdictions around the world, including Australia. For instance, gambling was recently linked to suicidal distress in the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention advice. Research about the relationship between gambling and suicide is only recently emerging, however, a systematic review has identified indebtedness and shame as key features of this relationship.
This presentation will open with a brief performance by lived experience advisor, Shonica Guy. The research presented is informed by interviews with 31 people, undertaken to understand the how gambling leads to suicidal distress, and how to better prevent gambling-related suicide. Participants included:
Interviews were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis to generate themes to inform understanding of the mechanism of the relationship between gambling and suicide. Social practice theory was applied to move beyond the framing of individual responsibility, to consider how the routinised practice of gambling may be disrupted.
People who experienced suicide attempts described ‘irrational’ or ‘robotic’ engagement with gambling. This led to deepening cycles of loss that eroded not only financial but often social and biological resources, their identity and agency, ultimately leading to suicidal ideation and attempts. Focusing on these survivor accounts, we describe how people who gamble had tried to safely ‘defect’ from the practice of gambling to break these cycles of loss. However, the current system provides very limited or sometimes inappropriate support to reduce gambling and participants had felt there was ‘no other way out’. Attention to the commercial determinants of health showed how suicide prevention efforts can be undermined by economic operators, who instead effectively create a pathway to suicidality through measures that encourage continued gambling, with ‘playing to extinction’ taking on a new meaning in this context.
There are many interventions and reforms that could be implemented to support people to control their losses, and defect safely from harmful gambling. Suicide prevention should be a priority in gambling provision and regulation.