Other Interests
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 response – to offer people who have been involved in disaster 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 July 7, 2005 London bombings, the Litvenko affair. and swine flu.
In many venues, he has argued that people are more resilient than we give them credit for, and that the best thing we can do in the immediate aftermath of trauma is to offer practical support and encourage people to turn to their own social networks, such as family, friends, colleagues or family doctor. However, after a few months, when most distress has reduced, then for the minority who are still psychologically distressed or disabled it is appropriate to offer evidence-based psychological interventions.
Read more about this topic: Simon Wessely
Famous quotes containing the word interests:
“The essence of the modern state is that the universal be bound up with the complete freedom of its particular members and with private well-being, that thus the interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state.... It is only when both these moments subsist in their strength that the state can be regarded as articulated and genuinely organized.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“It’s not greed and ambition that makes wars—it’s goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons, for liberation or manifest destiny, always against tyranny and always in the best interests of humanity. So far this war, we’ve managed to butcher some 10,000,000 people in the interest of humanity. The next war, it seems we’ll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)