Who is Simon Wessely?

another one that needs updating/re-writing; @Russell Fleming

 

"The Society of Occupational Medicine ---"
EDIT following Trish's comment below - thanks Trish ---
Maybe the elements in the Society of Occupational Medicine who believe in CBT & GET want to honour the deity that is Wessley. Worrying i.e. there's no evidence that s--t works, yet these "professionals" want to honour unevidenced interventions? Hopefully they'll be held to account in tribunals etc. and discover the error in their ways.

Wessley really is something --- lauded all the way to the Lords --- yet the only objective evidence is that his theories don't work --! Sad.

 

Thursday 15th June 2023
9.25 Eponymous Lecture: The 2023 Jameson Parkinson Lecture: ‘The French Have a Word for It’


Professor Sir Simon Wessely, Interim Executive Dean, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College, London


ironically followed by :

Dr Natalie Green, Managing Director, Cordell Health
First Do No Harm

Programme – Day 1 – Occupational Health (occupationalhealthconferences.com)

 

Recurring theme, as Monica Gandhi receives the John Murray award for Excellence in Internal Medicine. Notorious for being completely wrong about Covid - repeatedly.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1667313009642057730


You may recall her interview with Mehdi Hasan in early 2022.

ETA: In the replies someone links an entire curated timeline of failed predictions.

 

Signed it. Was gonna go on an expletive-ridden rant, but I think everyone here knows who Simon Wessely is.

 

John Pring from Disability News Service is asking on Twitter,
"Many of you will know of the notorious 'Malingering and illness deception’ conference held in Woodstock, near Oxford, in November 2001, which was funded by DWP. Does anyone know the name of the hotel where the conference took place?"

 

I don't know but I had a quick look, and searching for conference centres in Woodstock brought up Blenheim Palace.
I'm not 100% sure but looking at some photos it looks like a possible match, the columns, steps, windows door paving etc...

https://twitter.com/user/status/1677659314004144128

 

for info purposes
there's a youtube video (Maxwhd)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVdJfJdKB5A

and

Don't think I've seen this before but a book also resulted from the meeting

Malingering and illness
deception

https://disabilityclaimssolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lo-Casio-Malingering-articles.pdf

 

I think the music running through the video is somewhat incongruous some kind of horror theme would be more appropriate considering the harm done with malice against a great many people .

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/finally-time-reform-outdated-mental-health-act-hvzbzpchs
It’s finally time to reform an outdated Mental Health Act

Thought I'd add the link here wimpishly before I have read it myself. I'm doubting it is specific to ME/CFS as title says it is about the mental health act needing to be reformed, but it is written by Wessely.

 

I'd say it is time to reform Simon Wessely.

But wasn't Wessely involved in the current act? It seems like he's been involved for so long, and he got a lot of what he wanted. Including stuff like IAPT, which is just as disastrous. So it looks to me like a politician who did a reform, then presents himself as a reformist... from his own failed reforms.

It's precisely the biopsychosocial model and how it was misapplied, the way he wants it, that is disastrous. And that's his whole thing.

 

Does anyone know where I can find early pictures of Wessely ideally a headshot from 1989 and 2002. This is the only one that I can find probably from the 90s I think.

 

a few early ones here
https://www.gettyimages.ae/videos/wessely

 

don't think this video has been posted

Integrating mental and physical healthcare | Professor Sir Simon Wessely

 

Brilliant thanks Sly

 

We're currently having a clear-out and packing in readiness for a house move, and among a bunch of old papers I found this copy of a letter from back when I was working at a psych unit in the 1990s. At that time, I didn't yet know who Wessely was, I just found it interesting because it was about ME/CFS which I'd recently had and recovered from (temporarily, as it later turned out). Back then I tended to keep copies of the rare occasions I came across ME mentioned in print.

It's a horrifying time capsule of how, in that day, Wessely was considered 'acknowledged UK expert on chronic fatigue syndrome' and 'clinically by far the best person to deal with this specific special interest group'. We are in a small town away from the thick of things, so it shows that his influence spread far and wide even that long ago.

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