The Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut, owners of the Mohegan Sun Casino, and Yale University are teaming up to fight problem gambling.
The tribe will fund work at the university to create cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) digital intervention that will give patients with problem gambling new treatment options. Yale hopes to develop a CBT-based mobile app to provide greater access to care and help them acquire skills to treat their problem.
The tribe will donate $2 million to Yale’s School of Medicine to develop the therapy. This is in addition to the $300,000 the tribe contributes to the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling. It has contributed more than $10 million to fight problem gambling since it first opened its casino.
John Krystal, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine said in a statement, “We are grateful for the opportunity to leverage Yale’s longstanding excellence in the fields of cognitive behavioral therapy and substance use disorders to develop new treatments for individuals suffering from problem gambling.”
Brian Kiluk, associate professor of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, said, “Using digital platforms such as mobile phones to provide treatment offers the potential to get help to more people. The hope is to identify effective new ways to expand access to treatment as easily and seamlessly as possible and provide a means to help improve the lives of people with gambling problems, their loved ones, and their communities.”
According to the tribe, this is the first joint effort of its kind with Yale.
