Dr Pratima Murthy is Professor of Psychiatry and heads the Centre for Addiction Medicine at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Bangalore, India. She has been a consultant to several international agencies like the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization. Her special area of interest is in addiction treatment and outcome. She has helped and evaluated large workplace programmes on addiction prevention and is currently interested in reducing risk factors for noncommunicable diseases at workplaces. She has been involved in studies both in clinical, community and workplace settings. She has also led an epidemiological study on well being in the community and is particularly interested in applying concepts of personality and well being to recovery from addiction. She has served as an international trainer in substance use disorders and treatment for the ILO, Colombo Plan and WHO SEARO and been involved in training in tobacco cessation in the country. Dr Murthy has authored several training manuals for addiction treatment. She has recently developed training manuals to address risk factors for NCDs for the WHO country office. She has also been involved with the designing and running of online programs for capacity building in addiction. She is also interested in the legal aspects of addiction.