Are We All Addicts Now?

Vanessa Bartlett is a researcher, writer and curator and producer currently based between London, Liverpool and Sydney, Australia. She is a PhD candidate at University of New South Wales, where her research explores digital art as a way of prompting audiences to reflect on their own mental health in the gallery space. Henrietta Bowden-Jones is the Founder and Director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic in the UK, the only NHS service (CNWL NHS Trust) designated for the treatment of pathological gamblers and their families. She is a medical doctor specialised in Addiction psychiatry and an Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College where she obtained her Medical Doctorate on the topic of “Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex impairment as a predictor of early relapse in Alcohol Dependency” Her current roles include: President Elect of the Medical Women’s Federation and Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Spokesperson on Behavioural Addictions. She is a member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Behavioural Addictions Advisory Group and a member of the Royal Society of Medicine’s Psychiatry Council. She has published extensively on behavioural addictions in research journals, has edited two textbooks and regularly lectures at national and international level on the neuroscience and clinical aspects of behavioural addictions. Her third textbook, on women and pathological gambling, will be published in May by Routledge.

Reviews'Henrietta’s perspective has been invaluable,” says Beales. “She’s brought this very robust medical research, and also this enthusiasm for the way that art can expand the audience for scientific research.'Katriona Beales, a-n