First Face for Tribal Gaming: Adapting a Culturally-Grounded Mental Health Training for Tribal Casino Employees

Session Title

Special Populations

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation

Start Date

26-5-2026 12:00 AM

Abstract

Research shows that gambling industry employees are at heightened risk for gambling harms and other mental health concerns. At the same time, particularly in land-based casinos, they are confronted daily with individuals who in turn are at risk for or expressing these problems. Providing employee training to handle these interactions competently and in a way that preserves their own well-being is essential to promoting a safer gambling environment for customers and employees alike. The need for mental health awareness and competency among gaming industry employees might be even greater in Tribal casinos. Although there is extensive inter-Tribal diversity, rates of mental health problems are elevated in Tribal communities. Tribal communities also have unique resources and strengths that can be leveraged to address these challenges. In recognition of this, in collaboration with seven Tribal nations and the Healing Lodge of the Seven Nations, we developed a novel culturally-grounded, community-based mental health training (xaʔtu̓s - First Face for Mental Health) that trains Tribal community members about how to respond to individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. This presentation will provide an overview of that curriculum, its adaptation for Tribal casino employees, and plans to evaluate its effectiveness for improving Tribal casino employee knowledge and competence about mental health and gambling-related issues, as well as their own health and well-being.

Author Bios

Dr. Nelson is the Director of Research at the Division on Addiction, Cambridge Health Alliance, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Nelson is involved in a variety of projects, covering gambling, impaired driving, and mental health and addiction among Tribal youth and communities. Her gambling work has focused on both predicting the development of gambling problems through analysis of online gambling records, and evaluating gambling interventions such as voluntary self exclusion. Dr. Nelson’s work with gambling records has involved mapping patterns of online betting behavior, developing predictive models based on early play patterns to detect subscribers who are at risk for gambling problems, and examining specific characteristics of sports gambling that might relate to the development of gambling problems. As an extension of that work, Dr. Nelson has developed an interest in the accuracy, use, and potential problems with those predictive models and other uses of AI in the gambling sphere.

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May 26th, 12:00 AM

First Face for Tribal Gaming: Adapting a Culturally-Grounded Mental Health Training for Tribal Casino Employees

Research shows that gambling industry employees are at heightened risk for gambling harms and other mental health concerns. At the same time, particularly in land-based casinos, they are confronted daily with individuals who in turn are at risk for or expressing these problems. Providing employee training to handle these interactions competently and in a way that preserves their own well-being is essential to promoting a safer gambling environment for customers and employees alike. The need for mental health awareness and competency among gaming industry employees might be even greater in Tribal casinos. Although there is extensive inter-Tribal diversity, rates of mental health problems are elevated in Tribal communities. Tribal communities also have unique resources and strengths that can be leveraged to address these challenges. In recognition of this, in collaboration with seven Tribal nations and the Healing Lodge of the Seven Nations, we developed a novel culturally-grounded, community-based mental health training (xaʔtu̓s - First Face for Mental Health) that trains Tribal community members about how to respond to individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. This presentation will provide an overview of that curriculum, its adaptation for Tribal casino employees, and plans to evaluate its effectiveness for improving Tribal casino employee knowledge and competence about mental health and gambling-related issues, as well as their own health and well-being.