Who is Simon Wessely?

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
 
Maat said:
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
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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/
 
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Valerie Eliot Smith said:
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/
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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.
 
SNT Gatchaman said:
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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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
 
SNT Gatchaman said:
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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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.
 
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.


A 2007 amendment to the Mental Health Act called for advance wishes to be “respected”. However, it also ditched a requirement for disorders justifying detention to be “treatable”, introducing an arguably less therapeutically minded, more risk-averse “appropriate” test instead.

If two doctors diagnose that you have a mental health disorder (e.g. depression, bipolar disorder) and deem that you need to be treated for it to protect you or the public from your possible future actions, the choice and course of treatment is ultimately, lawfully, out of your hands as a patient.

Under the Mental Health Act in its current form, you can record advance treatment wishes before you’re hospitalised. But all advance treatment refusals other than neurosurgery can be overridden if deemed ‘appropriate’ by clinicians.

Should advance refusals of ECT become binding under the new Mental Health Act?

Wessely believes there remains a role for ECT in mental health care.

“In my advance directive, I’ve said if I get old and get very severe melancholic depression, I would like ECT,” the psychiatrist told MHT, speaking after a recent London workshop for the new Act.

Earlier in the day, review vice-chair and suicide survivor Steve Gilbert referenced the “life-saving” qualities of ECT during a group discussion on advance statements.

Mental Health Today asked Wessely to describe how ECT, which comprises induced brain seizures, contribute to improved mental health.

ECT has its backers. But what are its tangible therapeutic qualities?

“Have you ever seen anyone suffering from catatonia or depressive stupor?”

“These are some of the most severe forms of mental illness we have.”

“These are people who have stopped speaking, who have stopped eating or drinking, and who – in the old days – died. They died of starvation. There was no treatment available. You couldn’t feed them. It wasn’t possible. And they died. And it’s a really very unpleasant death.”

“That happened in the era before psychotro… [tails off, but presumably was going to say psychotropics] before we had promazine [an antipsychotic]… and before we had the ability to do nutrition and before we had ECT.”

“That was quite a common occurrence in mental hospitals. We don’t see those illnesses half as commonly now as we used to, thank god, but they are still around. They haven’t gone away.”
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Maat said:
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.
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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.
 
Sly Saint said:
View attachment 24051 View attachment 24052
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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..

.
 
Lou B Lou said:
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.
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Do you mean the PACE Trial Identifier? See attached file.
 

Attachments

Thoughts? Too harsh? Fair? Seen on Bluesky.
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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.
 
rvallee said:
Thoughts? Too harsh? Fair? Seen on Bluesky.
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I read some where, probably on here, that someone said "Sir's career is more important than my life" and my God, I felt that.

So many of my choices have been taken away because medicine refuses to listen to, believe and prioritise our reality. A small group of people with so much power and influence have doomed millions of us to a shadow existence.

Until we have a Post Office moment and people realise that this could happen to them too and are absolutely outraged, nothing will change.

Even with so many healthcare workers affected, organised and angry TPTB still manage to maintain the status quo.

I have no idea how we change it.

There are no words to describe the incandescent rage I feel at the waste of mine and other people's potential because of this situation, and now amplified by the current direction of travel in politics and public discourse.
 
JellyBabyKid said:
I read some where, probably on here, that someone said "Sir's career is more important than my life" and my God, I felt that.
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"Sir" has otherized us in the medical world.

And the medical world has embrased it and acted on it.

Know nothing, don't study anything about ME/CFS and keep pointing to Sir and our heads.

Grote griebels. (Dutch) Just try and pronounce it, same as :banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead:
 
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