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