Henry Stephens was born in London, the youngest of five children, of whom two others became doctors, Dr WLB Stephens of Brisbane and Dr A Horton who was for a while a medical missionary in India. His father, the Reverend HB Stephens, was vicar of St David's Anglican Church, Moorabbin. Henry was educated at Melbourne High School, being head prefect, and he graduated from Melbourne University Medical School in 1929. After residency at the Alfred Hospital, he worked from 1930 to 1937 with the British Phosphate Commission at Nauru and Ocean Island. In 1933 he married Miss Winifred Hosking. They had four sons of whom he was very proud.

Leaving Nauru in 1937 he went to London intending to be a surgeon. However he took instead an appointment with the LCC Medical Service at St Ebba's Hospital in Surrey and turned to psychiatry, being attracted by the new physical treatments then in their infancy, which were to revolutionise treatment in mental hospitals. He enlisted in the BEF as a psychiatrist in 1939 and returned to Australia in 1941, seeing service with the AIF in New Guinea and the Solomons. He finished war service with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He was eventually made a full colonel and received the ED for his distinguished service.

In 1946 he started private practice in Spring Street, Melbourne and remained in practice till shortly before his death. He held several hospital appointments, being made visiting specialist at Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital in 1946; honorary psychiatrist, Geelong Hospital 1946; assistant psychiatrist, Alfred Hospital 1946; honorary psychiatrist, St Vincent's Hospital 1955. He retired from St Vincent's in 1965, having rebuilt the psychiatric unit which had become almost non-existent before his time. He remained an honorary consultant psychiatrist at St Vincent's till his death.

Henry was a competent clinician, calm and shrewd in his judgement, conservative in temperament, practical by nature and training. He remained loyal to the physical traditions of his early teachers in psychiatry. His orientation was organic rather than analytic, pragmatic rather than speculative. As a teacher he was conscientious. To his patients he was courteous and formal, to his assistants considerate and generous. He practised his profession with dignity and honour.

He was not a man of hobbies though he delighted in rural life in Gippsland after his retirement. He was essentially a family man, concerned with the careers of his sons, one of whom, William (FRACP, FRCP) became a consultant physician at Albury. Another, Edward, became a dairy farmer at Leongatha. The Reverend Geoffrey (MA Oxon) was appointed chaplain at Magdalen College, Oxford and Mark joined the Education Department. To the end he remained calm, cheerful and serene. He had a deep religious faith, a high sense of idealism and a broad human compassion. He served faithfully and well his family, his profession, his patients and his country.