Around 300 officers attending this very informative seminar were district representatives of the Junior Police Officers' Association, Training and Staff Relations Officers, officers from Formation Training Teams, instructors from Police College, students of sergeant promotion courses, and police officers from various Regions.

The seminar, entitled "Perspectives of Problem Gambling", covered wide-ranging issues such as gambling trends, especially those of soccer and online gambling; relationship between police work and problem gambling; addictive behaviour from a medical perspective and its treatment; experience of tackling problem gambling with illustration of successful examples; and use of community resources to solve problem gambling.

Mr Lawrence Lee, a counsellor in problem gambling at the Even Centre of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, opened the seminar by sharing with the audience the recent trend of gambling in Hong Kong and his clinical counselling experience.

The second speaker, Dr Ronald Chen, a practising psychiatrist, explained, from his professional perspective, the underlying causes of the addictive behaviour of gambling and the effective ways of treatment.

Finally, Senior Inspector Edward Kwan, author of "A Handbook on Mutual Aid Against Problem Gambling", spoke of his experience in handling problem gambling, citing successful examples and the use of community resources to tackle the problem.

Most of the audience felt that the seminar had enlightened them on the issue and would enable them to assist colleagues or friends with potentially addictive behaviour to seek proper treatment.

The contents of the seminar will be made into VCDs for distribution to TSROs as training reference material. Officers may borrow the VCD from PSG direct. Notes of the seminar will also be uploaded to the Force E-Notice Board, Staff Relations Electronic Library and Financial Helppage.

Before the seminar closed, Assistant Commissioner (Personnel) Tang Kam-moon presented Certificates of Appreciation to an instructor and several clinical psychology trainees from the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong for assisting PSG in providing professional services to police officers who were on duty during the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference.

The seminar on problem gambling attracts a full house