Simon Wessely - Military Health

Military Health

More recently, 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.

While this work, Wessely's evidence to the Lloyd Inquiry, and the work of other investigators was crucial in categorising Gulf War Syndrome as a verifiable consequence of service in the Gulf, which resulted in affected Gulf War veterans being able to receive war pensions, Wessely does not believe that Gulf War Syndrome exists as a distinct illness, stating "Is there a problem? Yes there is. Is it Gulf War Syndrome or isn't it? I think that's a statistical and technical question that's of minor interest". Instead Wessely favors psychological explanations for what he views to be a 'Gulf War health effect' which he believes to be caused by stress, specifically troops' anxiety about chemical weapons and vaccines, as well as misinformation about Gulf War Syndrome.

Wessely's main current research is around various aspects of military health, including further work on the outcome of Gulf War illness, psychological stressors of military life, risk and risk communication, risk and benefits of military service, screening and health surveillance within the Armed Forces, social and psychological outcomes of ex service personnel, and historical aspects of military psychiatry. In 2006 he and his team completed a study on the health of 20,000 UK military personnel who took part in the invasion of Iraq. The results were published in the medical journal The Lancet.

In 2010 they published a second study looking at the impact of both Iraq and Afghanistan on the health of personnel showing that there had been no overall increase in mental health problems, despite the increased operational tempo and numbers of deployments, but that those in the reserves and those with direct combat exposure continued to be more at risk. Alcohol problems continued to be more frequent that post traumatic stress disorder.

He is a trustee of the charity Combat Stress that provides help for service personnel with mental health problems and recently spent a sabbatical in the Department of War Studies at King's College London.