The gambling industry continues to wrestle with problem gambling, being put in a position to solve an issue there is yet a solution for. Psychotherapist Jason Shiers believes we’ve been looking at it all wrong, and offered a different approach to our Becky Liggero Fontana.

“There’s always room for ingenuity and innovation in this particular thing, the current results have to suggest that it’s worth a look at something new,” Shiers said. “It feels a little bit like we’re spending more money on the same things that aren’t currently working. By working, I don’t mean that they’re not effective in anyone’s life and they’re not making a difference, I mean they’re not really sort of making a huge dent in the problem gambling.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrFQPU7yezw&feature=youtu.beVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Jason Shiers has a different way of looking at problem gambling (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrFQPU7yezw&feature=youtu.be)

If we start looking at the root cause, we might find something that works. “A lot of the current way of looking at things is focused on the symptoms,” Shiers said. “There’s diagnosis, there’s illness and the psychiatric help, and the psychological help, talking therapies, undoing the struggles of the past or giving strategies and techniques to deal with problem gambling, and why do people actually make those decisions to spend money that they don’t have. “