You are in Artículos volume 45 Issue 3

Suicide and Pathological Gambling: risk factors and future directions

abstract

Pathological gambling is now considered a public health problem. Among the many potential adverse consequences of gambling, the most serious is suicidal behaviour, as 20% of pathological gamblers will attempt suicide during their lifetime. The aim of this article is to highlight the importance of suicide in pathological gambling to make this problem visible. For it, the current literature that relates both aspects have been analysed extracting the necessity to analyse the pathologies that concur with the pathological gambling like relevant aspects for suicide prevention. In addition, financial stress, personality, or sex would be aspects that should be considered to make an effective prevention. Finally, some future directions for its study and clinical treatment are proposed.

Keywords:

Suicide; gambling; mental disorder; dual pathology; sex.

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Authors

Sara Meca-Zapatero - Clínica de Psicología G.SINadicciones
Miguel-Angel Serrano - Departamento de Psicobiología. Universidad de Valencia