A trustee of Action on Addiction, neuroscientist Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones FRCPsych, BA (Hons), DOccMed, MD (Imperial), has received New Year Honours.
Dr Bowden-Jones is to receive an OBE for services to addiction treatment and research. She is the founder and director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic; the first and only NHS multidisciplinary treatment centre for the treatment of problem gamblers. Since opening in 2008, the clinic has dealt with thousands of referrals and has built an extensive national database on pathological gambling.
Alongside her role as a board member at Action on Addiction, Dr Bowden-Jones is an Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London, and she also runs a problem gambling research consortium, which explores the nature of pathological gambling from a neurobiological and clinical perspective. Her previous experience includes running the inpatient NHS detoxification services for alcohol and drugs in central London and the Soho Rapid Access Clinic for homeless drug addicts on behalf of the Central North West London NHS Foundation Trust.
Dr Bowden-Jones is the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ spokesperson on behavioural addictions and problem gambling, and a patron of the Sporting Chance Clinic. She is also a board member of the International Society of Addiction Medicine and a curatorial adviser for Hooked, an exhibition about addiction, at the Science Gallery London.
Reflecting on her OBE, Dr Bowden-Jones said: “I am truly delighted to have received this OBE for my work in addiction treatment and research having dedicated my entire professional life to this disease. About 100 million people in the world suffer from alcohol use disorders and about 27 million people are opioid dependent. Many more are experiencing harm from other drugs and from behavioural addictions.
“I would like to dedicate this award to the children of addicted parents in recognition of all the suffering they are experiencing and of the harm it has caused them. We will continue fighting this illness until science leads us to be able to prevent it. Furthermore, I would like to express my gratitude to this Government for finally taking seriously the issue of gambling disorder and the harm it causes not just to problem gamblers but to their spouses and children.”