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BACKGROUND: Problem gambling is associated with a high prevalence of psychiatric comorbidity and suicidality, which substantially contributes to the mortality of problem gamblers. AIMS: To explore the mortality rate of problem gamblers and contribution of suicides to its structure. METHODS: A database-linkage retrospective cohort mortality study of persons hospitalised in psychiatric facilities with diagnosis of pathological gambling (dg. F63.0 according to ICD-10) in the CR in 1994-2011 was performed. The National Register of Hospitalisations and the Death Information System were data sources. The Indirect standardisation was performed and the Standardised Mortality Ratio (SMR) was computed. The mortality structure in the sample was compared with that of the general population in the 1994-2011 after adjusting for gender and age. RESULTS: There were 7,704 individuals in the cohort, of whom 7,215 (93.7%) were males and 489 (6.3%) females, with the mean age of 33.2 years, (males 32.7, females 40.5). The total person- time of observation was 64,370 person-years. In total, 547 persons died (516 males, 31 females). The mean annual crude mortality rate was 8.50/1,000 persons (8.44 in the males, 9.63 in the females). The central estimate of SMR was approximately 2 over the years, slightly higher in females. External causes of death predominated in the crude mortality structure of the hospitalised gamblers (44.6%), most of whom were suicides (26.7% of all the deaths). The adjusted (for gender and age) proportion of suicides was 3.4 times higher than in the general population. CONCLUSION: Suicidality represents a considerable part of clinical picture of gambling disorder and significantly determines mortality of disordered gamblers. Attention should be paid to the risk of suicides in disordered gamblers in treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]