Gambling-related suicide in East African Community countries: evidence from press media reports

Kaggwa, MM, Mamun, MA, Najjuka, SM, Muwanguzi, M, Kule, M, Nkola, R, Favina, A, Kihumuro, RB, Munaru, G, Arinaitwe, I, Rukundo, GZ and Griffiths, MD ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-6524, 2022. Gambling-related suicide in East African Community countries: evidence from press media reports. BMC Public Health, 22 (1): 158.

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Abstract

Background: Gambling activities and associated mental health problems have become a topic of increased concern globally. Many individuals with a severe gambling disorder have gambling-related suicidality. However, no study has explored gambling-related suicide in East African Community (EAC) countries. The present study investigated the press media reporting of gambling-related suicide cases from EAC countries.

Methods: As there is no established suicide database in that region, media reports were utilized to collect gambling-related suicide data. Gambling-related suicide case reports were searched for in EAC countries’ press media websites using Google. After removing duplicates, a total of 18 suicides were found.

Results: The victims were all males aged 16 to 40 years. The most prevalent reason for the death was university students who had used their university tuition fees for gambling and losing the money (n = 4/17). All the suicide deaths were in Kenya (10/18), Uganda (7/18), and Tanzania (1/18). Betting on soccer was the most common type of gambling reported (n = 11/15), and hanging was the most used mode of suicide (n = 10/16).

Conclusions: Based on the press media reports, 18 males were identified as having carried out gambling-related suicides. The countries with the most widespread opportunities to gamble had more gambling-related suicides, although the number of suicides was very small.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	BMC Public Health
Creators:	Kaggwa, M.M., Mamun, M.A., Najjuka, S.M., Muwanguzi, M., Kule, M., Nkola, R., Favina, A., Kihumuro, R.B., Munaru, G., Arinaitwe, I., Rukundo, G.Z. and Griffiths, M.D.
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date:	2022
Volume:	22
Number:	1
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1186/s12889-021-12306-2 DOI 1511162 Other
Rights:	© The Author(s) 2022. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of thislicence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	25 Jan 2022 11:30
Last Modified:	09 Jun 2022 15:40
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/45418

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