Henrietta Bowden-Jones

Henrietta Bowden-Jones OBE (born 27 April 1964) is a medical doctor, a Psychiatrist and Honorary Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College London. In 2008 she founded and became Director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic, the first and only NHS centre (CNWL NHS Trust) to treat gambling disorder.

In 2018 she was part of the NHS England working group that used her clinic as a template to plan the opening of 14 more clinics across the country as part of the NHS 10 Year Long Term Plan.

In 2019 with NHS funding, she opened the first NHS centre to treat Gaming Disorder following the inclusion of this addiction in the new ICD 11.

She is now the Director of the newly established NHS funded Centre for Behavioural Addictions overseeing the work of both the National Problem Gambling Clinic and the Centre for Internet and Gaming Disorders.

She is the current President of the Medical Women's Federation ( 2018-2020), President Elect of the Royal Society of Medicine Psychiatry Section and the Royal College of Psychiatrists Spokesperson for Behavioral Addictions.

Bowden-Jones was born in Turin, Italy to an Italian mother and British father. She was inspired to study psychiatry because of Lucy a character in the Peanuts cartoon as well as the epidemic of heroin addiction among the middle-class Italian population when she was growing up. She studied Medicine at the University of Pavia. She specialised in psychiatry on the Charing Cross Hospital Psychiatry Rotation working for many years at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. She earned a Doctorate of Medicine in neuroscience at Imperial College London.[] As a junior doctor she was mentored by William Shanahan. In her postgraduate research she specialised in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex of alcohol dependent people, using computerised neuropsychological assessments that included the Cambridge gamble task.

Bowden-Jones has worked in Addictions Psychiatry for all of her NHS consultant career, starting with running the Soho Rapid Access Clinic for homeless opiate addicted patients to running the NHS addictions inpatient facility in central London for alcohol and all drug addictions for many years before moving to the field of Behavioural Addictions and opening the two national centres.

She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Faculty of Addictions at the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

She works a few sessions a week at the Nightingale Hospital.

She was a Trustee of Sporting Chance Clinic for 10 years and has been a Trustee of Action on Addiction since 2017.

In 2008 she established the Problem Gambling Consortium, a UK-wide collaboration that investigates the neurobiology and the clinical underpinnings of gambling disorder, the research published from the group is available on Researchgate.

She was described by The Guardian as being "innovative and experimental", trialling the use of Naltrexone and Group Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. The National Centre for Behavioural Addictions also supports family members who struggle with the results of problem gambling and gaming disorder.

Bowden-Jones was concerned at the lack of provision for gaming disorder in the UK, and said she was "delighted" when it was included in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems.

In the 2019 New Year’s Honours List she was made an Officer of the British Empire ( OBE) for her work in Addiction Treatment and Research.

Awards

• 2010 The Times Best Doctors in Britain
• 2014 Royal College of Psychiatrists Public Educator of the Year Award (finalist)
• 2014 Women of Achievement Award Health
• 2015 National Council on Problem Gambling Joanna Franklin Gambling Treatment Award
• 2018 National Health Service Women Leaders Award
• 2019 Order of the British Empire

Books

• 2015 A Clinician's Guide to working with Problem Gamblers - Routledge
• 2017 Are We All Addicts Now? - Routledge
• 2017 Problem Gambling in Women: An International Female Perspective on Treatment and Research - Routledge
• 2018 When People Get Out of Control - Little, Brown and Company