The Deaths Nobody Counts: Why Gambling Carries Such a High Suicide Risk

It’s late. You’re driving home, or lying awake, after a loss you can’t take back. You’ve done the math on what you owe, and it doesn’t work. You can’t tell anyone, because then they’d know. And a voice in your head starts telling you everyone would be better off without you.

If that’s where you are right now, please stop reading for a moment and call or text 988. You don’t need to have anything figured out. You just need to stay here and let someone help.

And please hear this: the way you feel tonight is not the end of your story. People have stood exactly where you’re standing, sure there was no way back, and today they’re married, raising children, sleeping through the night and laughing again. You can get help. You can move on from this.

This week’s Sunday Project was one of the hardest we’ve done. It was about gambling and suicide: how often it happens, why so few of these deaths are ever counted, and why people who gamble are so vulnerable. It was also about people who came through that dark place and are living good lives today.

On October 27, a man Marc Lefkowitz knew through the gambling treatment and recovery community died in Prescott Valley, Arizona. The next day, the Prescott Valley Police Department issued a statement describing a fatal pedestrian collision on Highway 69. It said nothing about suicide and nothing about gambling. Marc was careful to point out that the official report has not established the death as a suicide.

But he knew the man had struggled with gambling and the damage it had done to his family, and that one of his hardest battles was forgiving himself. “He had people that cared about him,” Marc said. “But sometimes the shame, the guilt, and the hopelessness associated with gambling addiction can become overwhelming.”

At a recovery meeting the following day, someone placed a card with the man’s name on an empty chair, to remind everyone that somebody was missing.

Marc, who has worked in gambling treatment for more than 30 years and has been in his own recovery for over four decades, put one question to the panel: how many gambling-related suicides are happening in America that nobody’s counting?

There’s no reliable national answer, and that’s the problem. Death records in the US rarely mention gambling. Families may not know about the debts, or may not want to say.

Where researchers have looked closely, the numbers are alarming:

• A Swedish national study of more than 2,000 people diagnosed with gambling disorder found their suicide death rate was about 15 times higher than the general population’s.
• In Victoria, Australia, researchers went through eight years of coroner records and found at least 201 suicides linked to gambling, including 17 family members of people who gambled. That was at least 4.2% of all suicides in the state. Because coroners don’t routinely ask about gambling, and people often hide it, the researchers say the true number is higher.
• A review of 39 studies found that around 31% of people with gambling disorder had thought about suicide at some point in their lives, and 16% had attempted it. Debt, depression and alcohol problems were all linked to higher risk.
• In England, the government’s health agency has estimated between 117 and 496 suicides a year are associated with problem gambling. It’s an estimate, not a count, because the records to count them don’t exist.

America has no equivalent figure. Host Deborah Buhaj, a gambling addiction therapist, told the panel she believes gambling addiction carries the highest suicide rate of any addiction, and that as betting grows, we’ll see more of these deaths. “We’re in a race against time,” she said.

The panel kept coming back to the same reasons.

• It’s hidden. There’s no smell on your breath and nothing to see. You can lose thousands, close the app and walk into the kitchen as if nothing happened. That secrecy means nobody steps in, and you carry it alone.
• The debt starts to feel impossible. Marc described the stages first mapped by Dr. Robert Custer, who started the first gambling treatment program, at a VA hospital near Cleveland: winning, then losing, then desperation, then hopelessness. As long as there’s a spark of hope that today might be different, people keep going. When that spark goes out, the danger is at its highest.
• Shame piles up. The lies, the money borrowed, the people hurt. “Gambling addiction is not just about losing money,” Marc said. “It’s about losing relationships, losing trust, losing your sense of self-worth.”
• It can happen fast. Dan Field, LCSW, Clinical Director of Westside Gambling Treatment, often takes calls passed on from 1-800-GAMBLER. Many come from people right after a big loss, full of hopelessness, guilt and despair. In his experience, suicide among gamblers is often impulsive rather than planned. That’s what makes the hours after a loss so dangerous, and why reaching out in those hours matters so much.
• Your brain narrows. Dan pointed to addiction researcher Nora Volkow’s description of addiction “hijacking” the brain. In a gambling binge, nothing else gets through. The same tunnel vision can take over in a crisis. Add the sleepless nights that come with late-night betting, and clear thinking gets harder still.
• Quitting can feel like losing everything you invested. Years of studying lines and stats can feel like a degree you’d be throwing away, Dan said. Admitting it hasn’t worked can bring on a crisis of its own. But that bottom is also where getting well begins.

This week’s guest, Matt Burgiss, who now works in gambling harm prevention in the UK, knows exactly how fast it can happen.

Matt started with scratch cards at 15. At university he bet on soccer with his teammates, small amounts, just for fun. Then came slot machines, then online gambling, and it took over. By his early twenties he was a professional actor, gambling 16 or 17 hours a day. He lived with his parents between jobs, and they had no idea. He’d close the laptop when he heard their car, eat dinner with them as if everything was normal, then gamble through the night.

At 22, he lost everything he had and everything he could borrow, in about two or three hours. Lying in bed that night, he was overwhelmed with guilt, thinking about the harm he might one day do to a family of his own. Within hours, he had tried to end his life. He survived, but spent weeks in a coma, months in hospital and a year and a half learning to walk again.

Looking back, one thing stands out. He was extremely close to his parents. He talked through every big decision with them. But that morning, he said, “I did not once think about what it would do to them.” That helped him understand something important: “I wasn’t in control of it at all.”

He also believes there were many chances along the way for someone to step in, from gambling companies to his bank to the people around him. Early intervention is the message he shares everywhere he speaks.

Today he has been in recovery for 10 years. He’s married, with a one-year-old child. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life,” he said. “And I never thought that 10 years ago.”

Marc sat in that recovery meeting with people who were grieving. People who understood the disease and the pain. And he found himself thinking about the faces that sell sports betting on TV.

“I wish LeBron James or Kevin Hart were sitting in that room,” he said. “Not in a commercial, not reading a script, just sitting there, listening.”

Listening to the silence around an empty chair. To what gambling does to a person, a family, a whole community. None of that fits into a 30-second ad. And none of it disappears because someone says “gamble responsibly” at the end.

Marc’s voice broke as he spoke. “I wish the people selling America on sports betting could have been there,” he said. “Maybe they would have understood why the human cost deserves to be counted.”

Marc quoted the lawyer Bryan Stevenson: you’re not the worst thing you’ve ever done. “You may have lost money, you may have lied, you may have hurt people you love,” Marc said. “But your life is worth more than your gambling losses.”

He believes self-forgiveness is where recovery starts. Gambling disorder is a recognized illness, and there’s no sense punishing yourself for an illness. That doesn’t mean getting off scot-free. You’ll pay back money and make amends. But as he put it: “What we don’t love and forgive about ourselves, we punish.”

Matt says he has forgiven himself about 95%. He uses the other 5% as motivation. His family helped save his life, and every day he doesn’t gamble is his way of saying sorry. Giving back helps too. “We can’t keep what we don’t give away,” Marc said.

Dan was honest about the road ahead. Early recovery can feel like depression, because the old ways your brain got its highs are gone. That’s normal, and it passes, especially with a group around you. Another hard patch can come six to 12 months in, when things feel flat. Stay connected, even when you feel you no longer need to.

“People can and do get well,” Dan said. “Help is available.”

• Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), any time, day or night.
• Call 1-800-GAMBLER. In California, it can connect you to free treatment sessions through CalGETS.
• Take Gamblers Anonymous’ 20 questions. As Bob G, in recovery since 1993, pointed out, the last one asks whether you’ve ever considered self-destruction or suicide because of your gambling. If your answer is yes, tell someone today.
• Veterans: contact the VA about its gambling treatment programs.
• Westside Gambling Treatment runs a mostly virtual intensive outpatient program for California residents. The next group starts in early 2027.
• Go to a meeting. Gamblers Anonymous meets in person and online across the US.

As Marc put it: “You don’t have to solve everything today. You just have to stay here and allow people to help you.”

If betting has taken over your time, your money or your head, Stop Betting Sports can help. Join the Sunday Project every week, watch past episodes on YouTube at Stop Betting Sports, or reach out at stopbettingsports.com.

If you or someone you love is in crisis or thinking about suicide, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) in the US.

Sources

1. Karlsson, A., & Håkansson, A. (2018). Gambling disorder, increased mortality, suicidality, and associated comorbidity: A longitudinal nationwide register study. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 7(4), 1091–1099. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.7.2018.112
2. Rintoul, A., Dwyer, J., Millar, C., Bugeja, L., & Nguyen, H. (2023). Gambling-related suicide in Victoria, Australia: A population-based cross-sectional study. The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific, 41, 100903. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanwpc.2023.100903
3. Armoon, B., Griffiths, M. D., Mohammadi, R., & Ahounbar, E. (2023). Suicidal behaviors and associated factors among individuals with gambling disorders: A meta-analysis. Journal of Gambling Studies, 39(2), 751–777. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-023-10188-0
4. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (2025). Gambling-related harms: identification, assessment and management (NG248), Context, citing Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (2023). https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/NG248/chapter/context