Still, Vargas said he’s treated fewer than a dozen of those patients in the last decade. “I cannot say all of them stopped gambling, but I can say that the way they made decisions about gambling was a different process,” he said, “because they considered their families more, they considered their financial decisions more.” Vargas no longer sees patients, though in the past he has treated gambling addiction from slot machines, table games and lottery scratch tickets “There's definitely many, many more people with problem gambling,” said Enrique Vargas, a clinical supervisor at Gandara. The Gandara Center is one of the only mental health clinics in Springfield, Massachusetts, that offers treatment for problem gambling.īut even there, about a mile from the MGM Springfield casino, there’s only one clinician certified in gambling treatment.
This is the second in a three-part series.
