Association between gambling and self-harm: a scoping review

Purpose We conducted a scoping review to map existing research of the potential link between gambling and self-harm. Materials and methods: We searched eight electronic databases and retrieved 190 studies that met our inclusion criteria. Results: Nearly 90% of studies were cross-sectional. Authors most commonly sampled people seeking professional treatment or other help for problem gambling or other substance use/mental health conditions (n = 103, 54.2%). Eighty-two studies (43.2%) provided descriptive analysis only, 50 (26.3%) used a bivariate test to study the direct association between gambling and self-harm, and 58 studies (30.5%) used a multivariate test to account for factors, such as psychiatric conditions, that might partly account for any relationship between gambling and self-harm. Because gambling and self-harm are both multidimensional concepts, we delineated specific categories and mapped the available research according to these categories. We found that most frequently, studies assessed the connection between the presence/severity of problem gambling and suicide attempts (n = 108; 56.8%). Studies of non-suicidal self-harm were rare. When we grouped studies according to both their analytic strategies and their findings, we found that the single largest group of studies (n = 33, 17.4%) were those that reported a positive association between gambling and self-harm within multivariate models. Conclusions: These findings indicate that meta-analytic work, particularly of the association between problem gambling and suicide attempts, is feasible. On a practical level, these findings indicate that people experiencing problem gambling should be screened for self-harm risk.