Jul 3, 2019
Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones is a medical doctor and neuroscience researcher working as Consultant psychiatrist in Addictions.
Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones was appointed Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire ( OBE) in the 2019 New Year’s Honours for Services to Addiction Treatment and to Research.
She was elected President of the Medical Women’s Federation in 2018 having been Vice President from 2014 to 2016 and President Elect 2016-2018.
She is Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College and the past co-recipient of Medical Research Council grants in the area of decision-making and impulsivity as well as a Wolfson Family Trust 3 year grant.
She is the Founder and Director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic based in London. The clinic is the first and only NHS multidisciplinary treatment centre in the UK for the treatment of problem gamblers,it has been inundated by thousands of referrals since its opening in 2008 and holds an extensive national database on pathological gambling.
Henrietta also runs a Problem Gambling Research Consortium, collaborating with various universities on different research projects exploring the nature of pathological gambling from a neurobiological and clinical perspective.
Henrietta belongs to the ICCAM (Imperial, Cambridge, Manchester)neuroscience research group funded by the Medical Research Council to develop effective treatment for all addictions.
Prior to founding the National Problem Gambling Clinic she spent several years running the inpatient NHS detoxification services for alcohol and drugs in central London (CNWL NHS Foundation Trust) as well as leading the Soho Rapid Access Clinic, treating the homeless drug addicts of central London.
Much of her time is spent lecturing at conferences and teaching medical postgraduate students, psychologists, mental health professionals, magistrates, psychiatrists, neuroscientists and others about behavioural addictions, internet addiction disorder, problem gambling,the neurobiology of addiction, decision-making and risk, adolescent brains and impulsivity . She is regularly invited to lecture nationally and internationally, she has been interviewed extensively both by the press ( The Times, Financial Times,Guardian, Observer,Telegraph,Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Vogue, Wired etc)and radio ( Radio 3 Private Passions) as well asTV (Women’s Hour, You and Yours, Today Programme, Despatches, The One Show and many others). She gave a TED talk in 2013, has spoken at Hay-on-Wye and Latitude bringing science to a wider population.
She is the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ spokesperson on Behavioural Addictions and Problem Gambling as well as having been an elected member of the Executive Committee Addictions Faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists for nine years until 2014. She is now a co-opted member of the Addictions Faculty.
She held the post of elected Finance Officer for the Addictions Faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists for the period 2006-2010.
She was Academic Secretary for the Faculty of Addictions at theRoyal College of Psychiatrists for the year 2011-2012 and on the Conference Committee from 2009-2012.
Henrietta was a member of the Government’s Responsible Gambling Strategy Board from 2009 to 2016 advising on prevention, research, treatment and education. She was on the Prevention Panel from 2009 to 2012.
2015 ongoing- Member of the Royal Society of Medicine’s Psychiatry Council.
2015 ongoing – member of the World Health Organisation ( WHO) Behavioural Addictions Gaming Disorder Group.
Having completed her medical degree and her psychiatric training she spent some years with Imperial College researching the effects of alcohol on the brain. She was awarded an MD in Neuroscience for her work, her doctorate thesis was on Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Dysfunction in Alcohol dependency. Decision-making is one of her areas of interest.