Henrietta Bowden-Jones


Henrietta Bowden-Jones OBE is a medical doctor, a Psychiatrist and a Honorary Professor at University College London Division of Psychology and Language Sciences. In 2008 she founded and became Director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic, the first centre to treat gambling disorder. This clinic remained the only centre of its kind for 12 years.
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. There are now 5 NHS clinics treating gambling disorder and more will open across the country.
In 2019 with NHS funding, she founded the National Centre for Gaming Disorders, the first NHS centre to treat Gaming Disorder following the inclusion of this addiction in the new International Classification of diseases.
In 2020 she became Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow, Dept of Psychiatry at Cambridge University.
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.
Immediate President of the Medical Women's Federation.
President Elect of the Royal Society of Medicine Psychiatry Section.
Royal College of Psychiatrists Spokesperson for Behavioral Addictions.
In January 2020 Bowden-Jones was appointed Honorary Professor at UCL, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences.

Early life and education

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. In her postgraduate research she specialised in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex of alcohol dependency, using computerised neuropsychological assessments that included the Cambridge gamble task.

Career

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 co-opted member 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 and a Trustee of Action on Addiction.
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.
In the 2019 New Year’s Honours List she was made an Officer of the British Empire for her work in Addiction Treatment and Research.

Awards