Overseas program helps gamblers with addiction

Overseas program helps gamblers with addiction
By David Allen, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, January 31, 2008

CAMP LESTER, Okinawa — Although people with gambling addictions have long been able to get help from base family counseling centers and chaplains, the only overseas medical program for “pathological” gamblers is at the U.S. Naval Hospital on Okinawa.

“The program has been in place without interruption since its inception in 2003 and is open to anyone eligible for care at a military health care facility,” said hospital spokesman Brian Davis. “Okinawa’s program is the first to be established at an overseas location and continues to be the referral center for gambling addiction treatment in the Western Pacific.”

Davis said 107 patients have completed the program since 2003.

A report on a study of the program’s first year said 35 people entered the program. Twenty-five were active-duty servicemembers; 26 were men. Seven were military spouses and three were Department of Defense civilians.

According to the study report, published in the August 2005 issue of Military Medicine, all 35 met the criteria for having pathological gambling disorders. The American Psychiatric Association defines pathological gambling as an impulse control disorder that is a chronic and progressive mental illness.


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