UK MPs recently called on the government to review the Gambling Act again, as up to 496 suicides per year may be related to gambling issues. However, this data has been questioned by experts and criticized as "based on unsound methods, potentially misleading the public".
According to data cited by the Parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) estimated in 2023 that there are between 117 and 496 gambling-related suicides annually in the UK. However, industry insiders point out that this estimate is derived from a study of Swedish hospital records from 2006 to 2016 and lacks local data support.
Dan Waugh, a partner at Regulus Partners, noted that the Swedish study was directly imported into the UK data model, assuming that the suicide rate of problem gamblers is 15.1 times that of the general population, ignoring factors such as severe mental illness among the subjects studied. He believes this leads to a significant data bias.
Legal expert Melanie Ellis also criticized the parliamentary letter as "based on incorrect data," unlikely to prompt a re-examination of the Gambling Act.
Dr. Bowden-Jones, a member of the OHID team, pointed out as early as 2022 that suicide rates in the UK should not be directly inferred from studies in other countries. Data from the UK's Office for National Statistics shows that from 2001 to 2016, only 21 suicides in England and Wales mentioned "gambling", and it also acknowledged that the data might be severely underestimated.
Despite the uncertainty in the statistics, experts generally believe that gambling is indeed a risk factor for suicide, but emphasize that policy-making should rely on more reliable methods and data support.
