Simon Wessely

Professor Sir Simon Wessley is the current President of the Royal Society of Medicine.

 He is Regius Professor of Psychiatry and Co-Director, King’s Centre for Military Health Research and Academic Department of Military Mental Health, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London.

 He is the immediate past President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (2014-2017) and Chair of the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act in England and Wales.

 After studying medicine and history of art at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he finished his medical training at University College Oxford, graduating in 1981. He obtained the MRCP in Newcastle, before moving to London to train in psychiatry at the Maudsley. He is an active clinical academic psychiatrist and was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1999.

 Starting his research career in unexplained symptoms and syndromes, he established the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Research Unit in 1991 and was a founder member of the Cochrane Depression and Anxiety Group. In 1996 he established the Gulf War Illness Research Unit which, in 2003, subsequently became the King’s Centre for Military Health Research.