The Las Vegas branch of the U.S. Veterans Administration has opened a gambling addiction treatment facility, targeted at military members and veterans who struggle with the disorder.
According to WUSF News, the inpatient facility was opened last year by the Department of Veteran Affairs Southern Nevada Healthcare System. It is only the second such program in the VA; the first opened at a VA center in Ohio in 1974.
In the Las Vegas program, veterans spend up to 45 days in therapy and group activities that attempt to treat their addiction.
Roxanne Untal, who runs the 20-bed Las Vegas clinic, said she has patients who’ve racked up more than $100,000 in gambling debts. Researchers say such levels of debt and the accompanying stress put veterans with gambling addictions at higher risk for suicide.
“You can treat the gambling, and once you treat the gambling, you’re still facing that debt,” Untal told the news outlet. “And how do you go about living a life that is meaningful with that? I think it’s just very different consequences and very different pathways.”
VA research indicates that of people who gamble, about 5 percent are addicted, but the number among veterans is 8 percent. Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder have a 60 percent higher rate of gambling addiction than the general population, the research concludes.
“Drugs and alcohol have public voices, public faces, and a much longer history of those voices advocating in this field,” said Bo Bernhard, executive director of the International Gaming Institute at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “Gambling addiction is really a newer field.”
