Who is Simon Wessely?

Such a shame. He might have been a good historian.

 

Dunno, he might have made a lot of shit up in that respect too.

 

From 2011 BBC News interview with Wessely re death threats and then with Charles Shepherd who explains patients anger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KP0q7MtANM

 

When it comes to ME, and stuff he's said in the past, I think he's already wanting to mess with history anyway.

 

Letter from Countess Mar to Professor Simon Wessely 4th December 2012

 

Why is he so protected? Who is behind protecting him? Why do no complaints stick?
Perhaps all that psychosocial crowd made of Teflon!!

 

Probably the Queen? Just a wild guess...
Her husband Philip is said to have said somewhere in the past that if he should be reborn after death he hopes to return as a virus that will decimate humanity. It's not a new concept that royals&co view themselves as (genetically and morally) better (although all the incest practices lead to worse DNA, but never mind), and it's also common knowledge that sick people aren't very popular.

 

I hate to defend the Royal Family, but some people have taken this quote out of context:

 

Sorry @Esther12, that doesn't sound better. And I see I remembered the context correctly. Thanks for posting the entire quote.

Edit: Difficult topic...

 

Okay. I've just seen some people on 'conspiracy' style websites misunderstand it out of context, and not realise it was meant to be a funny thing to say.

 

Not sure there is a who but a what. I think that institutions that benefit from his perspective will rally round. Institutions are made of individuals of course but they act as a united collective when threatened and when their livelihood is threatened then they respond with a collective institutional response. Maybe. Open to other thoughts.

 

I know that I will be regarded as a conspiracy theorist but I think there is a whole layer behind this that we have never got close to understanding.

When I first read the report on the Oxford conference I somewhat naively thought that Clare chaired the meeting as a known media expert with the relevant skills. But then you see that Gelder (there is a name to make Wessely's eyes water -you can just see how the stories of threats arise-wife calls up the stairs "Sir Simon", they are an informal family, "there's someone calling himself Gelder on the phone for you.") provided funding and Sharpe got to write it all up. Maudsley and Oxford-there is a clear sharing of responsibility. Exactly the two places you would go to to sort out a problem-or create a different one.

It has always seemed to me that there must have been heads of department steering and overseeing matters, but they managed to keep their fingerprints off everything. Its very strange. I always thought that senior academics fought to get their names on papers to which they had the most tenuous connection. Not in this case.

All right. Call me a conspiracy theorist.

 

@chrisb, I don't understand the details (since I seem to lack the needed knowledge). As you know, I'm also a conspiracist.

 

"
How often does Britain's top psychiatrist visit a doctor? Hardly ever, it transpires.
Professor Sir Simon Wessely is president of the Royal Society of Medicine, advises the military on soldiers' well being, has spent much of his career studying baffling conditions like ME and is leading an independent review of the Mental Health Act for Prime Minister Theresa May."
"
But it hasn't all been plain sailing. He stopped studying ME, or chronic fatigue syndrome, years ago, after suffering a backlash from a faction of sufferers who believed the illness was a purely physical condition. His research, carried out with colleagues, found combining cognitive behavioural therapy with light exercise brought about a full recovery in a third of patients.

Simon doesn't regret researching the syndrome -
"Absolutely not, I'm quite certain we did a lot of good" - but thinks changes could have been made.
"We spent too much time with people we agreed with and not enough with people we didn't agree with. We believed the evidence would speak for itself, and it didn't." The impact on his life endures.

"It's not been pleasant. It's a difficult area for me to talk about. I would describe it as stalking, unpleasant ways of people trying to interrupt your career, incite hostility, threats."

By contrast his work on military health has been the 'most satisfying and enjoyable' part of his career. When Gulf War Syndrome, characterised by mysterious symptoms like fatigue, pain and breathing problems, emerged among veterans in the early 1990s, he showed soldiers' health had been affected by serving in the conflict, which meant they could access war pensions. "We never really found out what it was. We found out all the things it wasn't."

https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/heal...hood-and-life-as-a-top-psychiatrist-1-9331473

 

Well that's a highly factual bit of reporting I see .

These BPS folk really are putting themselves about a bit at the moment aren't they. Propaganda?

 

"Ordinary people can get involved in what we do."

Who the hell does he think he is.

 

Hopefully someday people who wish to go into the psych professions will be appropriately screened so that the ones who should not be involved in that area will be directed elsewhere.