Who is Simon Wessely?

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.

 

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.

 

Anyone know where the source of this info may have come from?

 

No access Liability for psychiatric illness - ScienceDirect Liability for psychiatric illness, Wessely S, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Volume 39, Issue 6, 1995, Pages 659-669,
ISSN 0022-3999,
https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-3999(95)00067-S.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/002239999500067S)

This paper is cited in a 2010 discussion about the Page v Smith case

THE PAGEv. SMITH SAGA: A TALE OF INAUSPICIOUS ORIGINS AND UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES | The Cambridge Law Journal | Cambridge Core

 

A bit of background in link below: short version of the Page v Smith case (from 2014 blog post).

Not sure how this fits with Simon's argument (haven't tried to access that paper yet) but the final result in this case wasn't particularly helpful for PwME's:

https://valerieeliotsmith.com/2014/03/13/a-very-short-page-update/

 

Thanks Valerie. I remember reading your view of it quite a while ago, but I'll refresh my memory on it now. My first thoughts, depending on what he's arguing, went to Article 8 Access to Justice.

 

I remember this, absolutely brilliant!

 

Poor them , yes it’s like having to calmly say (so people don’t accuse you of jumping the gun) they are being required to play along with expecting a tiger to suddenly not tiger for the first time in their life when someone chose to put the tiger there knowing what they were

I think the letter does a good job of walking this line and was important for them to get as public as possible

 

Rhi Belle, as far as I can tell, is a Scottish nurse working in the aesthetic (cosmetic) field. She gives an impressively thorough and detailed overview of Sir Simon’s career, which has been built on imbalanced and prejudicial approaches to such as ME/CFS and Gulf War Syndrome. As far as I am aware it provides a critical but accurate account that is perhaps surprisingly well researched for someone outside such as ME advocacy.

It is a full account that I had to read in several chunks that should be required reading for anyone interested in Sir Simon’s involvement in a number of clinical fields and in the light of this sounds a credible warning about his potentially partisan and imbalanced approach to trans issues. When the media in general, following the Science Media Centre party line, provides mostly sycophantic adulation, it is hearting that others outside our small world also see the harm he has caused.

 

It is very useful.

 

A bit of a key question - the tweet is a response to Rhi Belle' s tweet , but it's worth deeper consideration.

I don't know how helpful SW has been within his own mental health specialism
He has been truly brilliant at expanding and monetising a sphere of influence .

https://twitter.com/user/status/1849353537496449480


Is there a clinically vulnerable/socially marginalised group whose lives Wessely hasn't made worse?

 

Simon Wessely: ‘ECT is in my own advance directive’ | MHT

Simon Wessely: ‘ECT is in my own advance directive’
Barney Cullum
22 August 2018


Professor Simon Wessely, chair of this year's Mental Health Act review, discusses issues including treatment preferences, advance notices and consent in an exclusive interview with Mental Health Today.

 

eta: just in case they get lost on Xitter.

 

I am not sure of the relevance of what is said in that quote. There was a question as to whether one should be able to make an advance decision to refuse ECT. Wessely then replies that he has made an advance decision to have ECT if needed. What he says is sound but it seems irrelevant to the question.

I am not sure why anyone should want to decide in advance not to have ECT. It is life saving when needed.

 

There was a Very early PACE Trial protocol published on the net, which is difficult to find now. I cannot remember the full name of it. The patient participant entry criteria from that was one of the things patients publicly criticised. So the content of that protocol was what patients started criticising early on, before the first participant was recruited etc..

.

 

Yes! That's it. Does anyone know the date it was published?

 

Thoughts? Too harsh? Fair? Seen on Bluesky.

 

I find it very appropriate. "Your body my, choice" is a rallying cry following the US election, which all but guaranteed that abortion will soon be made illegal in the US. The slogan for abortion rights is "My body, my choice", and this turns it on its head, has become very popular as mockery from people who enjoy seeing other people suffer. It of course has a double meaning in condoning sexual assault, but that meaning is usually kept a not-so-subtle secret.

Which all, IMO, perfectly mirrors what the biopsychosocial is doing. And is a clever campaign. I don't think it would change much, but it is a fair framing that makes it clear what is on the line. I would expect physicians to react to this about the same way as those who voted for this are to the political rallying cry. Which only shows that they don't actually value bodily autonomy. Only when they happen to agree with the intent of the autonomy. Basically it's "your choice, but I will veto it if you choose wrong". Or, in our case, simply give you no choice, because they think they understand our subjective experience of reality better than we do. Which is insane and ridiculous.

Many thousands of people have made it loud and clear to people like Wessely that what they do to us is harmful. They don't care. Their thinking is perfectly equivalent to "your body, my choice". There is really little actual support for bodily autonomy in health care. Not for real. It's the autonomy they agree to. Which has expanded significantly in recent decades, it's on loan, but just like things like abortion rights can be politically turned upside down, so can those. Rights that can be denied. Duties that are optional. Not much difference when everything is political in nature.