Gwen Adshead

Dr Gwen Adshead has worked as a forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist in the NHS for nearly three decades. She spent most of her career as a consultant at Broadmoor Hospital, a high-security psychiatric facility in the south of England, where she treated people referred to by the media as "the violent insane,” but whom she described as "not mad or bad, but sad.”

Understanding and treating the psychological mechanisms that give rise to violence and life-threatening behavior towards others has been the focus of Gwen’s career. It is her guiding belief as a practitioner, writer and advocate that the most vilified and socially rejected members of society need and deserve psychiatric care and rehabilitation.

Since qualifying in medicine in 1983, Gwen trained in general psychiatry, then in forensic psychiatry and psychotherapy. She is a qualified member of the Institute for Group Analysis and has also gained two Masters Degrees and an honorary doctorate. She regularly gives lectures, both nationally and internationally, including recent professorships at the Yale School of Law and Psychiatry and at Gresham College. In 2013, she was honored with the President’s Medial by the Royal College of Psychiatry.

Gwen was the castaway on Desert Island Discs on 1 July 2010, and has been a guest on several other BBC Radio 4 programmes including Start the Week, In Our Time and The Life Scientific. Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, Gwen now lives near London.