Simon Wessely

Wessely’s father Rudi came to the UK in August 1939, one of the children rescued by Nicky (Sir Nicholas) Winton. Nearly all of Rudi’s family, including his parents, were murdered during the Holocaust. His father was the first of the “children” to meet Winton nearly 40 years later. He has spoken passionately about issues affecting refugees supporting Alf Dubs legislation.

On 26 June 2019 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science by the University of Oxford.

Wessely was succeeded as President by Professor Wendy Burn in June 2017.

In October 2017 the Prime Minister Theresa May announced that she had chosen Wessely to conduct a review of the Mental Health Act. He stated in an interview with the Huffington Post "Reviewing the act isn’t just about changing the legislation. In some ways that might be the easy part. The bigger challenge is changing the way we deliver care so that people do not need to be detained in the first place. In my experience it is unusual for a detention to be unnecessary -- by the time we get to that stage people are often very unwell, and there seems few other alternatives available."

In July 2017 he became the first psychiatrist to be elected as President of the Royal Society of Medicine.

In February 2017 he was appointed as Regius Professor of Psychiatry at King's College London, the first Regius Chair at KCL and the first in psychiatry anywhere in the United Kingdom.

During the 2016 EU referendum he was one of the leaders of the Healthier IN campaign, making the case for science and health.

In 2014, Wessely was elected president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has used his position to argue for better resources for mental health and the treatment of mental disorders and holding the government to account. This included drawing attention to the large disparity between those receiving any form of treatment for physical disorders such as diabetes and those with serious mental health problems, making the case that we can successfully treat many mental health problems, and that patients with disorders do get better. He also argued that there were dangers in pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights.

He has also claimed to oppose lazy or negative stereotypes and images of psychiatry and false dichotomies such as “physical versus mental” or “drugs versus talking” and instead putting forward more positive images. For example on Any Questions in August 2014, he opposed the motion proposed by Will Self that psychiatrists were to blame for the current epidemic of mental disorders.

In 2014, Wessely was elected president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He announced his priorities to include parity between physical and mental health, improving the image of psychiatry and psychiatrists, improving recruitment into the speciality, and ensuring excellence in education and training.

He was named in the Health Service Journal Top 100 Clinicians 2014, 2015. Listed in Debrett’s Top 500 as one of the 7 most influential doctors in the country.

He was instrumental in setting up the Commission on Acute Psychiatric Care, chaired by Lord Crisp, to investigate the increasing numbers of inappropriate out of area placements – over 5,000 patients a year being seen and hospitalised outside their local area, sometimes at the other end of the country. The report made recommendations which were incorporated into the Five year Forward View for Mental Health, accepted by NHS-England.

His 2013 Knighthood was for services to Military healthcare and psychological medicine.

In 2013 he led the successful bid to the National Institute of Health Research to establish a Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) for Emergency Preparedness and Response which he now chairs.

Wessely is married to Clare Gerada; they have two sons. His interests include skiing and history, and he cycled annually from London to Paris between 2006 and 2012, to raise money for veterans' charities.

Wessely also has a long-standing interest in how normal people react to adversity, and what, if any, responses are appropriate. He was a co-author of an influential Cochrane Review showing that the conventional intervention for disaster survivors – to offer immediate psychological debriefing – was not only ineffective, but possibly did more harm than good. Since then he has published on civilian reactions to the Blitz, and latterly an early study of reactions to the 7 July 2005 London bombings, the Litvinenko affair, and swine flu.

Malcolm Hooper, the Countess of Mar, and others have strongly criticised Wessely. In a 2002 article on chronic fatigue syndrome, The Guardian characterized the criticisms of one group of patients as a "vendetta." Wessely has repeatedly stated he has been the subject of numerous threats and personal attacks, and that "militants" have even made threats to his life. "It is a relentless, vicious, vile campaign designed to hurt and intimidate...For some years now all my mail has been x rayed. I have speed dial phones and panic buttons at police request and receive a regular briefing on my safety and specific threats." Wessely gave up research into CFS around 2001, and as of 2011 his clinical work was with members of the armed forces; he said: "I now go to Iraq and Afghanistan, where I feel a lot safer".

To balance these criticisms academic supporters would point out that he was appointed as a Foundation Senior Investigator of the National Institute for Health Research, which is given on very strict criteria including analysis of metrics/citations. The college of NIHR Senior Investigators is drawn from the most pre-eminent NIHR-funded researchers selected through annual competitions. He was also elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the medical equivalent of the Royal Society, in 1999. Only 40 are honoured per year, and it is the highest honour and professional recognition in UK academic medical science.

Wessely and his colleagues, using randomised controlled trials and follow-up studies, developed a rehabilitation strategy for patients that involved cognitive behavioural and graded exercise therapy, that is claimed to be effective in reducing symptoms of CFS (a condition that otherwise lacks a cure or unequivocally successful treatment) in ambulant (non-severely affected) patients. Other studies looked at the professional and popular views of CFS, neuropsychological impairment in CFS, and cytokine activation in the illness. Some of his other written work includes a history of CFS, numerous reviews, and co-authoring the 1998 book Chronic fatigue and its syndromes. He has also established the first National Health Service programme solely devoted to patients with CFS, and continues to provide ongoing treatment with patients at King's College Hospital.

For his work on CFS, Wessely was awarded the Jean Hunter Prize in 1997 by the Royal College of Physicians and was co-winner of the John Maddox Prize 2012 sponsored by Nature and the Ralph Kohn Foundation, and organised by Sense About Science on whose advisory council he serves. The award is given to individuals who have promoted sound science and evidence on a matter of public interest, with an emphasis on those who have faced extreme difficulty or opposition in doing so, as Wessely has done in researching neuropsychiatric elements to CFS despite alleged threats to his life. Some, however, have objected to this award being given to him due to concerns over the quality of his research.

Wessely's work was the first to show that service in the 1991 Gulf War had had a significant effect on the health of UK servicemen and women. Other work suggested a link to particular vaccination schedules used to protect against biological warfare, and also a link with psychological stress. His group also confirmed that classic psychiatric injury, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), was not a sufficient explanation for the observed health problems. He and his colleagues in the medical school showed persisting evidence of immune activation, but failed to show that exposure to organophosphate or cholinesterase inhibitor agents had caused chronic neurological damage. The group also showed that many veterans who left the Armed Forces with persisting mental health problems have found it difficult to access National Health Service (NHS) services.

Wessely completed a medical rotation in Newcastle. After attaining medical membership he studied psychiatry (his primary interest) at the Maudsley in 1984. His 1993 doctoral thesis was on the relationship between crime and schizophrenia. Post-doctoral studies included a year at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and a year studying epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 1999 he was elected fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci).

After attending King Edward VII School in Sheffield from 1968 to 1975, Wessely studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge (BA 1978), University College, Oxford (BM BCh 1981), and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (MSc 1989). In 1993 the University of London conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Medicine.

Sir Simon Charles Wessely FMedSci (born 23 December 1956) is a British psychiatrist. He is professor of psychological medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London and head of its department of psychological medicine, vice dean for academic psychiatry, teaching and training at the Institute of Psychiatry, as well as Director of the King's Centre for Military Health Research. He is also honorary consultant psychiatrist at King's College Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital, as well as civilian consultant advisor in psychiatry to the British Army. He was knighted in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to military healthcare and to psychological medicine. From 2014 to 2017, he was the elected president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.