‘Fables of Fortune’ shows the road to recovery from an addiction.

By Raif Karerat

WASHINGTON, DC: A brand new mural depicting the road to recovery for Asian American gambling addicts titled “Fables of Fortune” is slated to be unveiled in South Philadelphia on July 1.

The artistic facade will be situated on Wolf Street near 7th Street, according to Philly.com, just a few blocks from a trolleybus route to the SugarHouse Casino.

“Gambling is a problem across cultures, but some research shows that casinos target Asian-Americans,” said Dr. Catherine Williams, program and operations director at the city’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services.

Williams told Philly.com the mural project — located in the heart of Philadelphia’s Asian-American community — was catalyzed four years ago when members of the agency’s gambling task force determined that casinos use special ethnic-specific promotions to attract Asian Americans, putting them at a higher risk for gambling addiction.

Eric Okdeh, an artist from the city’s Mural Arts Program who created “Fables of Fortune,” said he met with groups of Asian immigrants, who shared their cultural stories about gambling, before he designed it.

“The mural was a tricky thing because it’s a loaded topic,” Okdeh said. “I had to approach it with sensitivity from a holistic mental health angle.”

According to Psychology Today, a strong belief in luck, fate, or fortune is part of the driving force behind Asians and gambling.

Research shows Asians in the U.S. have a disproportionate number of pathological as compared to the general American population. According to Dr. Timothy Fong, an associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, the rate of gambling addiction ranges from 6 percent to nearly 60 percent, depending on the specific Asian ethnicity — Southeast Asian refugees scoring highest — as opposed to the national rate of 1 to 2 percent.