Zona de Azar Japan – Japanese Health Officials Visit Windsor to Discuss Gambling Addiction Treatment

Japan.- May 9th 2019 www.zonadeazar.com In July 2018, Japan legalized casino gambling, and will allow three casino resorts to open in the 2020s. Officials stopped in Windsor on their way to a Toronto conference to look at Ontario’s only residential centre for problem gambling.

The Centre for Problem Gambling and Digital Dependancy exists at Hotel Dieu Grace Healthcare. Japanese officials took a tour and attended a presentation about the centre.

“Our residential program is a 19-day program. They come and live, eat and learn here. While they’re here we teach several different things, from emotional regulation to money management,” said Danielle Loiselle, problem gambling counsellor. HDGH offers both residential and out-patient programs for addiction services, ranging from gambling problems to social media addiction.

Psychiatrist Pat Montaleone said it was important to share knowledge and look at cultural differences with the visitors from Japan.

“They were surprised to see that we tend to encourage sharing some past traumatic experiences, negative emotions. In Japan it’s a bit more taboo. Gambling is looked at in a different way,” said Montaleone.

Hotel-Dieu Grace/Twitter

“There it’s more of an all or nothing approach. There you don’t seek help until you’re ready to completely abstain [from gambling].”

Montaleone said for HDGH officials it was surprising to hear how different the approach to gambling problems were in Japan.

Health officials from Japan discussed program components and treatment approaches with the HDGH partners.

“It was a meeting that was supposed to last about an hour, hour and a half.” said Montaleone — but there was so much to say the Japanese officials stayed for about three hours.

Montaleone said one of the big things they discussed was that sometimes it takes multiple attempts to abstain or pull back from something.

“A lot of what they’re planning to do matches what we’ve done,” said Loiselle. “[We told them to] utilize and collaborate with community resources as much as possible.”

Edited by: @MaiaDigital (Twitter) www.zonadeazar.com