The relationship between Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) scores and suicidality: Results of a nine-year cohort study of young UK adults
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background and Aims: Previous studies report cross-sectional associations between harmful gambling and suicidality. Longitudinal evidence is less common, but among young adults in the United Kingdom (UK), current longitudinal evidence highlights the specific association between increases in harmful gambling and subsequent suicidality. In a young UK adult cohort, we aimed to investigate whether harmful gambling, as measured by the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), would be associated with concurrent and future suicide attempts (at intervals of one, four, and five years). Furthermore, the four-year window was used to observe whether PGSI increases were a unique risk factor for suicidality, as has been observed before. In all instances, hierarchical logistic regression models explored whether associations were robust to controls for adolescent suicidality and relevant confounders.Design: A birth cohort study of the UK general population.Setting: Avon, UK.Participants: n=2,801 (62.4% female) participants with data for suicidality at 24 years from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC).Measurements: Past-year non-fatal suicide attempt prevalence was self-reported at 24 and 25 years (in 2017-2018). PGSI was measured at 20 and 24 years. Measured confounders were sex, maternal education, economic activity (employment/education status), hyperactivity, alcohol disorder likelihood, and adolescent suicidality.Findings: Past-year suicide attempt prevalence was 2.57% at 24 years, and 1.86% at 25 years. Confounder-adjusted models found that PGSI predicted suicide attempts at 24 years (Odds Ratio [OR]=1.13, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] 1.05–1.21, p=.001), and predicted future suicide attempts over one-year (OR=1.15, 95% CI 1.06–1.25, p=.001), and four-year timespans (OR=1.20, 95% CI 1.08–1.34, p<.001), but there was inconclusive evidence of this association over five years (OR=1.14, 95% CI 0.995–1.31, p=.058). There was inconclusive evidence that increases in PGSI scores between 20 and 24 years predict suicide attempts at 24 years (OR=1.69, 95% CI 0.72–3.99, p=.230).Conclusions: Among young adults in the United Kingdom, harmful gambling appears to be associated with suicide attempts; however, this association may be more complex long-term, and increases in harmful gambling during adulthood may not be an important factor.Keywords: Gambling-related harm, Suicide attempts, PGSI, ALSPAC, Longitudinal
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".