Hilarie CashDr. Cash is the co-founder and Chief Clinical Officer of reSTART Life, PLLC (www.netaddictionrecovery.com), the first residential and transition program in the USA or Canada to treat adult Internet and video game addicts. reSTART opened an adolescentprogram in 2017. Dr. Cash is one of the early pioneers in the treatment of Internet addiction, having recognized the problem in 1994. In 1999 she co-founded an outpatient clinic to work with this population. It was in this arena that she was able to develop her expertise in the assessment and treatment of Internet and video game addiction. She became a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist and Certified Problem Gambling Counselor to better serve the Internet-addicted population. When few experts were writing about how to address these problems, Dr. Cash teamed up with counselor and parent coach Kim McDaniel, MA, to write a practical guide for parents. Video Games and Your Kids: How Parents Stay in Control was published in 2008 and is still sold in the USA and Poland. Dr. Cash has also co-authored three peer-reviewed journal articles. Through her work she has become known locally, nationally, and internationally. She has been brought as a speaker and trainer to Spain, Poland, and China. She was particularly honored to be invited to attend the psychiatric conference in Beijing, in 2008, at which the psychiatric community was presented with the proposal to adopt Internet Addiction Disorder as a fully legitimate psychiatric disorder. The country had already declared Internet addiction their #1 Public Health Threat. Dr. Ran Tao had been doing research for several years and had the first treatment program for Internet addicts in China. At his invitation she, along with Dr. Jerald Block and Dr. Charles O'Brien, were asked to make presentations at the conference. Among other activities, they toured Dr. Ran Tao's treatment facility in Beijing. It was shortly after this trip that Dr. Cash met Cosette Rae, MSW, and began the rapid journey to open reSTART. The opening of reSTART created a huge media stir, clearly touching a societal nerve. Since their opening, Dr. Cash has been interviewed by over 700 media outlets, including the New York Times, ESPN, CNN, PBS, NPR, ABC, NBC, CBS, and many others both in the USA and abroad. She and reSTART are featured in several documentaries, including "No Time to Think", "Screenagers", "Screened Out", and, from Werner Herzog, "Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World". In 2019 the World Health Organization decided that the body of evidence was strong enough to add Gaming Disorder to its ICD-11, the code book used around the world for diagnosing diseases. Dr. Cash, and other leaders in this emerging field, are now waiting for the American Psychiatric Association to provide a similar diagnosis in their next version of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Read More Read Less