Who is Simon Wessely?

Ah, to be the King
and get everyone to sing
the praises of his glory
in an alternative type story

Again we are the 'other'
we ungrateful souls, who bother
his royalty with unyielding truths
that refuse to heal or to soothe

a conscience pricked
but no remorse
he'll lash back
and stay the course

For he's the King
no doubt of that
we must concede
and be his mat
 
Trish said:
I doubt it has any connection with the latest PACE publicity. It's more likely to be related to his role writing mental health policy for the government. And just a bit of self publicity for Simon in the local paper of the area her grew up in. The ME part of the story is just part of his self-mythologising about what a brave and wonderful man he is for helping lots of people to recover from ME against so much (alleged) hostility.
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Yes, he does seem a bit of a fantasist doesn't he.
 
Cinders66 said:
That’s probably why he did psychiatry. Did you see this bit

Psychiatry attracts 'a certain type', he says. "They tend to be a bit older - I always tell people psychiatry is medicine for grown-ups. I did the running around, 'Quick nurse, give me the needle', and all that stuff, up in Newcastle. It was interesting, but I didn't want to spend my life doing that."

Read more at: https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/heal...hood-and-life-as-a-top-psychiatrist-1-9331473
He always manages to put his colleagues down, that’s why I think he has an ego problem
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Yes. The way he belittles not just his medical colleagues, but implicitly their whole professions, is as revolting as the way he belittles patients. So blatantly ultra arrogant. How does he get away with it so publicly?
 
Esther12 said:
In this profile from the Times Wessely put on his website you also have the same myth:

"He discovered that by combining cognitive behavioural therapy and light exercise a third of patients make a full recovery."

https://web.archive.org/web/2018090...-professor-simon-wessely-times-6-august-2011/

Strange how journalists profiling Wessely keep promoting this falsehood. Where do they get this misleading claim from?
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Interesting how wrong you can be.

"He discovered (WRONG) that by combining cognitive behavioural therapy and light exercise (WRONG) a third of patients make a full recovery (WRONG again)."
 
Barry said:
Yes. The way he belittles not just his medical colleagues, but implicitly their whole professions, is as revolting as the way he belittles patients. So blatantly ultra arrogant. How does he get away with it so publicly?
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It reminds me of a thought that passed through my mind n relation to a colleague who shall remain anonymous.

I could see why one might want to be important.
I could see why one might want to be a rheumatologist.

But I could not see why anyone should want to be an 'important rheumatologist' (or 'top psychiatrist' for that matter).

The other awful thought is that if he really is a top psychiatrist, what are the others like?
 
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On the evidence quote, I assume he’s saying that they produced good, rock solid results but the community were resistant/fears not won over rather than his evidence ended up being weak

Even subtle things like that are clever in the medical world where evidence based medicine is the mantra, and he sounds so confident in his evidence the problem was they didn’t worry enough to communicate to the dumb lay person, that sounds so assured it’s convincing. But ironically in the states the treatments aren’t supported as the evidence is weak.
 
Sly Saint said:
"

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."

Malcolm Hooper and the Vets (sounds a good name for a pop group!) would disagree- as would other doctors practicing environmental medicine!
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As for Camelford victims some who have died- you can't "mind over matter" in that.... https://www.bmj.com/content/311/7001/395.2
"The small Cornish town of Camelford is the reputed site of Camelot in Arthurian legend. But what of Camelford's other claim to fame—as the location of the water pollution incident on 6 July 1988, when a driver accidentally dumped 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate into a reservoir at the local purification plant? As with many incidents that hit the headlines and then disappear, we are left today with a mixture of incomplete and contradictory memories: the aluminium sulphate made lots of people seriously ill; but mass hysteria was largely responsible for the furore.

A quick look at SW and Researchgate.net shows how terrifyingly thorough and systematic SW et al, have been in driving the BPS model of "psychologisation" MUS/CBT etc.for more than 20 years.

How the hell can we turn this clock round and damage limit when it is so systematically ingrained into anything and everything....??
The man's arrogance knows no bounds, nor does the wife's.

A reassessment published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research (1995;39:1-9) helps to sort out fact from fiction. Anthony David and Simon Wessely...

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon_Wessely/8
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14186076_Gulf_war_illness
https://www.researchgate.net/public...al_Consequences_of_a_Water_Pollution_Accident
 
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The problem with Camelford (as an example) is that in situations like this there will be heightened health concern on the part of people in an affected area. This should be seen as normal that some part of the local population (especially those with either no science knowledge or other health issues perhaps or a host of other reasons NOT any kind of failing on their part) will focus on the event and it's possible effects. Many innocent people had their health adversely affected by the incident. They became ill. There was (I believe) a legal failing. And certainly a moral one that this happened.

What SW did was, instead of point out this was the case and as a concerned citizen make his own suggestions how to stop this happening again chose to wave his hands vigourously in the direction of those that had not yet been clearly physically affected and say 'look here, over here' this is all overblown hype these people are not even physically sick. Essentially deflecting everyone's attention from the real problem and tainting those who were in fact ill so that the reality of their illness came into question.

Unpleasant to say out loud but SW is a moral degenerate. There is much to support this view and very little to contradict it.
 
This post and the following have been moved from this thread.

However some experts in Britain warned the test may be picking up symptoms of fatigue or anxiety rather than the disease itself, and could not be used as proof the condition is real.

Prof John Martin, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, University College London (UCL), said: “If a test is to have meaning it has to be able to be applied to a population of patients who can be defined clinically.

“The patients described had a variety of symptoms that could have arisen from a variety of causes.


“Further the authors do not relate the cellular finding in the test to a possible cause of the disease. CFS/ME is probably not a disease but a syndrome.

“The authors should consider whether their test is related to an effect of symptoms and not related to the cause.”

Prof Sir Simon Wessely, President of the Royal Society of Medicine, said: “There have been many previous attempts to find a specific biomarker for CFS. The problem is not differentiating patients with CFS from healthy controls. The issue is can any biomarker distinguish CFS patients from those with other fatiguing illnesses?

“And second, is it measuring the cause, and not the consequence, of illness? This study does not provide any evidence that either has finally been achieved.”
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Just read this from The Telegraph. Very cynical and depressing. Who is this "Simon Wessely" fellow? Seems to me like the usual discrediter you would find in major findings. And why does the article make the finding seem as it is a topic of controversy? Thoughts anyone?

Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science...-syndrome-may-picking-symptoms-not-condition/)
 
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