Who is Simon Wessely?

Discussion in 'Psychosomatic news - ME/CFS and Long Covid' started by Sly Saint, Nov 13, 2017.

  1. rvallee

    rvallee Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    That is so ridiculous. There has never been a time when the world was all roses and joy.

    But this can only be read as an admission of failure for his model, which I doubt he understands or would agree with. It's true that mental health care is terrible and doesn't deliver. But it should be improved, not cancelled. The man has made a career out of psychologizing real illnesses, and this is a huge part why mental health services are struggling so hard. They're inundated with people who have medical issues that those services cannot handle. Which in return floods medical services with the same patients, whose problems are never fixed but more resources are wasted for worse results in a never-ending loop of failure.

    Wessely is the person who trashed the house and complains that it's very messy. His approach reminds of a hilarious quote I saw about U2: in trying to make music that everyone likes, they ended up making music that nobody likes. People like him have only degraded the quality of medicine with generic trash. The best way forward would be to can this horrible biopsychosocial model and the people responsible for it, and reform the traditional top down aristocratic/technocratic model of health care. That he remains influential is such absurd failure.
     
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  2. Sean

    Sean Moderator Staff Member

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    It's psych! It's not psych!

    Too late, Sir Simon Says. This is the drearily predictable fruits of your decades of reckless unrestrained psychopathophilia. From day one you were spreading the psych gospel way too hard, way too early, way ahead of any robust evidence, installing this crap in every nook and cranny of power you could find, and this is the inevitable outcome.

    You cannot blame others for that.
     
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  3. tornandfrayed

    tornandfrayed Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    All physical symptoms are signs of mental illness, but mental illness doesn't exist. Handy in getting rid of the pesky patients, but he may not have quite thought this out if he wants to hang on to his esteemed career.

    These musings might draw attention, and some journalists and colleagues might start digging and find out that his eminence is built on sand.
     
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  4. DigitalDrifter

    DigitalDrifter Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    It is due to the Goldacre Effect, when usually skeptical people hold a far lower standard of evidence for psychological explanations of physical syndromes than physical explanations. Somebody should write an MEPedia article about it.
     
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  5. Adam pwme

    Adam pwme Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  6. Trish

    Trish Moderator Staff Member

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    What was the newsnight piece?
     
  7. Nightsong

    Nightsong Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  8. Adam pwme

    Adam pwme Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  9. Adam pwme

    Adam pwme Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  10. Trish

    Trish Moderator Staff Member

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    Thanks Adam.
     
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  11. bobbler

    bobbler Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Just looked her up. She has a medical degree then became a fellow in Evidence Based medicine at Oxford. With her journalism quals in between.

    It looks like she worked in investigations for the BMJ at some point.
     
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  12. bobbler

    bobbler Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Does she have her own page here yet? I wonder if it might be useful if not?
     
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  13. MEMarge

    MEMarge Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Does anyone know who Wessely and co use as lawyers?
    For instance, the Tribunal where it was decided that PACE trial data, or a portion of it, could be released, c 2015. This followed Alem Mathees FOI request.

    All info re above or any other instances gratefully received by person asking the question.

    @Valerie Eliot Smith
     
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  14. Valerie Eliot Smith

    Valerie Eliot Smith Established Member (Voting Rights)

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    Thanks for the mention @MEMarge. I'd seen this question at its original source.

    The question itself is something of a red herring as anyone could simply raise it directly as part of an initial inquiry to a law firm. If a potential conflict of interest were to become apparent later on, the lawyer(s) concerned would be under a duty to disclose it.

    Client confidentiality is an issue so the main routes for discovering which firms might have represented any member of the psych lobby (a very wide grouping) would be through:

    a) Having authorised access to information about a case

    b) The information appearing in a published judgment where the legal representatives of each party are given

    c) Reliable anecdotal information

    Random searches might come up with something but it would be a long task and might yield nothing useful. Consultations with lawyers which have not resulted in further action would not normally be visible.

    Simon Wessely was not directly involved in the FOI Tribunal hearing that you mention. According to my blog post of that time, QMUL was represented by solicitors Mills & Reeve https://valerieeliotsmith.com/2016/...d-matthees-tribunal-hearing-and-open-justice/

    ETA: Simon's son, Alex, works at Leigh Day solicitors. This is the firm that represented the two ME patients, Fraser and Short, in the 2009 judicial review of the 2007 NICE guideline (way before Alex joined). It was a disaster. Avoid.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2024
  15. Hutan

    Hutan Moderator Staff Member

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    :rofl:
    That video reminds me a lot of Diane Morgan as Philomena Cunk. It would be laughable if it were not presenting such a warped view of Long Covid recovery. Actually, it's still laughable.
     
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  16. bobbler

    bobbler Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    It’s rather fake isn’t it. And for them it’s ‘all the cliches rolled into one’. It seems like comedy a parody of a real investigative report . Would love Diane Morgan to to a few programmes on this taking the mick out of their techniques she’d do a brilliant job

    Or Like someone who’s to put together an advert to tackle bad press - in that vein I almost imagine being a teenager at school having such tasks to do as a group, or when you are learning to do short videos course and have to as a group put together something a few mins long

    it’s almost like even they as the makers don’t believe themselves and have their tongue in cheek at getting away with saying what they do
     
  17. MEMarge

    MEMarge Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Many thanks @Valerie Eliot Smith.
    Have sent your response to the person asking the question, who is closely involved with the inquest.
     
  18. Amw66

    Amw66 Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  19. Ash

    Ash Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I’ve been waiting to read this a long while. Thanks for sharing.

    No need to throw sex workers under the bus I can’t help feel and I don’t think SW was ‘blind to’ anything. But these are still and certainly were very common linguistic habits. So I’ll put those aside and move on to the content.


    This is amazing. So straight forward and brief and yet manages to say so much about the political landscape and the power dynamics. About the character, politics and writing style of SW.

    So ethically Margaret Cook was on the correct side against the mischaracterisation and exploitation of people with ME, and about corruption in medicine more broadly.


    If (we say if do we details unconfirmed?) MC was fired for this, that is mistreatment of herself, a tragedy for people with ME and their families
    going by this writing.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2024
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  20. SNT Gatchaman

    SNT Gatchaman Senior Member (Voting Rights) Staff Member

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    Rhi Belle writing at the Trans Safety Network: Simon Wessely’s history of discrediting sick and disabled people could be bad news for trans health research priorities

    Reviews SW's history through the lens of research and care implications for transgender young people.

     
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