Media & Journalism
TV and Radio
BBC Radio 4 - Life Scientific. Simon Wessely on unexplained medical syndromes, 14th February 2017
BBC Radio 3 - Private Passions, 15th October 2017
BBC Radio 4 - Any Questions, 30th August 2014
BBC Radio 4 - 'Malicious' harassment of CFS Researchers, 29th July 2011
BBC Radio 4 - Soldiers, Science and Jerusalem, 21st February 2011
CNN - Depressed pilots cannot fly planes, 30th March 2015
Online Media
Financial Times – March 2021: When lockdown ends, euphoria for some, fear for others
Financial Times – March 2020: This is not ‘panic’, it is a reasonable response to a crisis.
Medical Careers - interview with Professor Wessely
‘Why the Saatchi bill has been flawed from the outset’ The Conversation. October 20, 2015
Project Syndicate – ‘The Trouble with Treating Trauma’
Battle of Ideas debate: ‘Alternative Medicine is Quackery‘
The Foundation for Science and Technology podcast ‘The future strategy for the management of mental health in the UK’
BBC News Science Environment ‘ ‘Torrent of abuse’ hindering ME research
BMJ podcast of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
BMJ podcast on for JNNP ‘Impact papers’
MAUDSLEY DEBATES podcasts
Gresham College lecture series
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue: The true story of Gulf War Syndrome 25 January 2006
London can take it – psychological reactions to terrorism from the blitz to Bin Laden 7th December 2007
Shell Shock or Cowardice? – The case of Harry Farr 1st October 2008
The Stigma of Mental Illness: Inevitable or unjustifiable? 10th Deecember 2008
Are Normal People Sane? 18th February 2009
Is it all in the genes? 15th April 2009
Journalism
Podcasts
Audioboom Episode 27: Declassified, Simon Wessely
Mental Elf
The PACE Trial for chronic fatigue syndrome: choppy seas but a prosperous voyage
Mental Health Today
New Liberty Protection Safeguards will prioritise timely care of the vulnerable
The Lancet
The future of mental health in the UK: an election manifesto. February 2015
Finding the serious in the absurd. March 2015.
Anders Breivik, the public, and psychiatry. April 2012.
Newsweek
How to stop the Brexit brain drain
BMJ
“Every time we have a mental health awareness week my spirits sink”
Author’s Response HERE
Alf, Petr and Jim: three reasons why we should allow Syrian child refugees into this county.
Mental Health Today
It’s official – there is such a thing as society
BMC Medicine
Wessely S. and Nicholson K. The morning after: what now for psychiatry research? BMC Medicine. July 2016
The Times
Junior doctors are shuffled around like lost luggage
How low can you go’ – low blood pressure is linked to tiredness and dizziness
Sexual fantasy and science fiction
The power of the placebo
The pain they say is bogus
Light shed on a reason for our discontent
From the cradle to criminality: what makes a violent criminal
Is water the best tonic
Sleeping with the therapist
A way out of a great despair
How the army keeps its head
Diseases that divide the continent
Free from creeping fears
Can life really drive you mad
Dangerous conclusions on crime
Why ME is not all in the mind
A car journey I can’t forget
How memory is made
Is religion a healthy habit
Don’t just look at it, doctor
How to stop death on the tracks
The stress of peacekeeping
Shocking treatment
Is this a racist diagnosis
Something nasty on the brain
When a leader cracks up
Is cancer all in the mind?
How long should a sick leave last?
Stand up and be healed
Don’t swallow the myth
Who is the real me
How to profile a Hannibal Lecter
Drug Culture
Doctors under pressure to label bookish children as mentally ill
A filling dose of doubts
Can talking help
Can psychiatrists ever help to catch killers?
Why ME is not all in the mind
The Independent
Mental health care ‘in danger’ if Theresa May takes UK out of European Convention on Human Rights
July 15 2013 – The Soldiers’ Suicides
In the culture of counselling we all risk becoming victims
Innocent victims of a deadly deceit
Comment: Right of Reply
The Government promised that mental health services would be equal to the rest of the NHS. So far, it’s failed
In the culture of counselling, we all risk becoming victims
You can’t just lock up psychopaths
Response to an editorial – clinical trials on babies
European convention on human rights
International Business Times UK
Terrorism is not a symptom of mental illness
VICE
We Asked a Psychiatrist About the Questionable Link Between Mental Health and Terrorism
The Yorkshire Post
Why health of NHS will be at risk if Britain leaves EU
New Statesman
Can talking make you better?
The Telegraph
Our junior docors are sick of their uncertain future
Prince Harry’s words are simple, true and remind us this is just normal
Mind the gap: It’s time to stop separating psychiatry and neurology 27th August 2011
Breivik, the public, and psychiatry
When the brain is the battlefield — mental health in the armed forces
The Guardian
Two-thirds of Britons with depression get no treatment
Comment is free – ‘Ill served
Researchers are not a threat to NHS patient privacy
Do we need to change the way we are thinking about mental illness
Any GP you want: so long as you’re healthy
Better Call Saul: is electromagnetic hypersensitivity a real risk?
Don’t stigmatise depression after Germanwings crash
Linking benefits to treatment is unethical, and probably illegal
The ‘drugs v talking’ debate doesn’t help us understand mental health
The Conversation
The real crisis in psychiatry is that there isn’t enough of it
DSM-5 tells us more about psychiatry than psychiatrists
Why the Saatchi bill was flawed from the outset
The Huffington Post
Mental Health Act Review
A New Gender Gap
From An Enlightenment King To Enlightened Princes: Mental illness And The Royal Family
Behind The Headlines Are Worrying Trends In Women’s Mental Health
Psychiatry, The Brain and the Deep Blue Sea
The Government’s Pledge to Give Mental Health ‘Parity of Esteem’ Means that the Law Needs to Change
Is Our Children’s Mental Health Worse Than Ours? If So – Why?
Mental Health Was the Centrepiece of Jeremy Corbyn’s First PMQs – And It’s Time for Action
Confidentiality In The Context Of Suicide Prevention
Other
‘The Trouble with Treating Trauma’
‘This is how I work’
DSM-5 at the Institute of Psychiatry
‘The Lost Trial: A Christmas Story‘
‘Dogma in retreat’ A review of the Tavi
Profiles/Interviews
BBC Radio 4 – Desert Island Discs, Professor Sir Simon Wessely
BBC Radio 4 – Something understood: Inside the Institution, Professor Sir Simon Wessely
Could the coronavirus trigger post-viral fatigue syndromes? – New Scientist March 2021
The Unprecedented President - Marylebone Journal August/September 2019
The Star Interview: ‘Ordinary people can get involved in what we do’
BMJ 2017: Simon Wessely: “Every time we have a mental health awareness week my spirits sink”
Seven doctors are among “most influential people in Britain”
BBC Radio 3 – Private Passions
BBC Radio 4. Life Scientific. Simon Wessely on unexplained medical syndromes.
’1,000 more psychiatrists needed to tackle ‘unacceptable failings’ in care’ The Telegraph June 2017
’100 years of horror, but we still need to change our attitudes towards the traumas of war’ The Telegraph November 2016
‘Mental Health Treatment’ Cosmopolitan 15th December 2014
‘If we treated people with diabetes the way we treat those with depression, there would be an outcry’ The Independent 14th December 2014
‘Drug Culture’, The Times 21st June 2014
BMJ Confidential 2013
Interview with Professor Simon Wessely, The Times 6 August 2011
‘Mind over body’, New Scientist March 13 2009
Professor on the frontline in fight to explain our casualties of war. The Yorkshire Post 22 June 2009
Lunch with Simon Wessely, The Lancet
John Maddox Prize
The e-Interview for the Psychiatrist, The Psychiatrist Online
Maudsley Newsletters
Newsletter 2
Newsletter 3
Book and Film Reviews
Student Mental Health Wellbeing. Higher Education. Edited by Nicola Barden & Ruth Caleb. 2019
Art amid the Bedlam. October 2016
Inside Bedlam, England’s first mental institution (PAGE 1 | PAGE 2)
Where My Heart Used to Beat. Sebastian Faulks. Hutchinson/ Random House, 2015.
Headhunters: The search for a science of the mind. Ben Shephard. The Bodley Head/Vintage Publishing, 2014.
Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It. Jennifer Michael Hecht. Yale University Press, 2014.
All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry’s Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental Disorders. Allan Horwitz, Jerome Wakefi eld. Oxford University Press, 2012
The Empire of Trauma: An Enquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman. Princeton University Press. 2009.
The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. Didier Fassin & Richard Rechtman (translated by Rachel Gomme). Princeton University Press 2009.
Textbook of Disaster Psychiatry. Eds R J Ursano, C S Fullerton, L Weisaeth, B Raphael. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness. Christopher Lane. Yale University Press, 2008.
Christopher Lane, “Shyness: How Normal Behaviour became a Sickness”, Yale University Press, 2007.
TEXTBOOK OF DISASTER PSYCHIATRY. Ursano R, Fullerton C, Weisaeth L, Raphael B. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Reading and Writing Book Reviews Across the Disciplines. James Hartley. Wiley Periodicals, 2006.
Integrated Care for the Complex Medically Ill Frits J Huyse, Friedrich C Stiefel, eds. Saunders/Elsevier, 2006.
The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Psychosomatic Medicine. Edited by J. L. Levenson. American Psychiatric Publishing Inc.: Arlington, VA. 2005.
Human Traces. Sebastian Faulks. Hutchinson, 2005.
Paul Wanke, Russian/Soviet Military Psychiatry, 1904–1945, London and
New York: Frank Cass, 2005.
Reducing the Stigma of Mental Illness: A Report from a Global Programme of the World Psychiatric Association Norman Sartorius, Hugh Schulze. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
The Black Death 1356-1352: The Complete History. Ole Benedictow, Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2004.
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: Issues and Controversies. Ed Gerald M Rosen. John Wiley & Sons. 2004.
Paul Lerner. Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890–1930. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003.
A War of Nerves. Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914–1994. Ben Shephard. London: Pimlico Books, 2002.
Fighting for Mental Health: A Personal View Norman Sartorius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Ten books chosen by Simon Wessely. Journal of Psychiatry, 2002.
The Irritable Heart. John Wheelwright. Norton. 2001.
And now the book reviews… British Journal of Psychiatry, 2000.
Psychological Debriefng: Theory, Practice and Evidence. Edited by B. Raphael and J. Wilson. Cambridge University Press:Cambridge. 2000.
Britain on the Couch: Treating a Low Serotonin Society. Oliver James Century, 1998.
Making Doctors: AnInstitutional Apprenticeship Simon Sinclair Berg, 1998.
Approaching Hysteria: Disease and its Interpretations. Mark S. Micale. Princeton University Press, 1995.
Film Reviews
The Iron Lady. 2012
The Skin I live In. 2011
Shelter. 2010
Shine. 1997
The Falling. 2015
TV Reviews
Dogma in Retreat. Talking Cure, BBC2