Does Trump have mental problems?

"President Donald Trump suffers from a dangerous mental illness and is not mentally fit for office." - This was the thesis announced in April 2017 at a scientific conference at Yale University by a group of psychiatrists and mental health specialists. "The president's 'paranoia' and 'delusions' prompted them to make their position public. - We have an ethical responsibility to warn the public about Donald Trump's dangerous mental illness," Dr. John Gartner, a psychotherapist who founded the organization Duty to Warn, said at the conference. This one has brought together more than a dozen mental health professionals who think like him: Trump is dangerous because he is sick. Mentally.

Prof. James Gilligan, an extremely experienced psychiatrist at New York University and an expert in predicting violent actions, explained at the conference that he has worked with some of the most dangerous people in society - murderers, rapists - and is convinced of the danger posed by Trump's behavior. - I can recognize the dangers from afar. And it doesn't take 50 years of studying dangerous people to know what a threat this man is," he argued. His petition calling on Trump to step down was signed by... 41,000 psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and other mental health professionals.

A story of ordinary madness

In October 2017, the book "Donald Trump's Dangerous Case: 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assess the president." In 360 pages, specialists in "essays" warned about the instability of the US president and the danger it entails. Among the authors were such notables as Prof. Philip Zimbardo - perhaps the best-known psychologist to study evil in man. He is also the author of a famous experiment in the 1960s in which a group of students were divided into prisoners and their guards. The book is also co-authored by Dr. Noam Chomsky - a famous American linguist from MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a prominent specialist in psycholinguistics and one of the most quoted scientists in the world.

With such authors, such a topic and media publicity, the book already hit the New York Times bestseller list in November. On Amazon, it earned 4.5 out of 5 stars with more than 500 individual reviews. One of the shorter ones published in the media read: "Donald Trump is: a. evil; b. crazy; c. all of the above."

The editor of this publication and one of the co-authors is Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a criminal psychiatrist, professor at Yale University School of Medicine, and an expert on predicting and preventing acts of aggression. In the New York Times, she wrote: "We represent a much larger group of mental health experts who want to warn of the president's psychological instability and the danger it entails. Now there are thousands of us." - she argued.

In their "essays," the authors describe symptoms observed in Trump that should be of concern not only to mental health professionals. And they argue, among other things, that Trump is a "pathological narcissist," a "sociopath," and a "man with a personality disorder." Philip Zimbardo along with Rosemary Sword - a well-known therapist from Hawaii - explain Trump's impulsiveness in terms of "unbridled and extreme modern hedonism." Gail Sheehy writes about Trump's lack of confidence, which crosses the line set for... paranoia. In the book there are terms: "malignant normalcy" or "insanity."

In the pages of the New York Times, Dr. Bandy X. Lee wrote on behalf of the book's authors, "We are now seeing [in the president] a growing out of touch with reality, signals of instability and unpredictable behavior, and an interest in violence as a means of coping. These elements expose our country and the world to extreme threats."

The co-authors wrote what they standardly recommend when their patients pose a similar threat to those around them: block their access to guns and subject their behavior to ongoing psychiatric evaluation. - We are unable to do this because of Mr. Trump's status as president. But his power and the arsenal of weapons at his disposal should raise more concern, not less," they explained.

Because of this threat, the letter's authors urged the US community and lawmakers to create a panel of experts that can independently and in accordance with medical procedures assess Trump's mental state.

Important and more important

Already at the Yale conference, there was outcry from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) that the actions of specialists who described the mental state of the U.S. president were in violation of the "Goldwater Rule." According to it, professional diagnoses cannot be announced about a public figure who has not been directly diagnosed by a specialist. The same theme is raised by Trump's lawyers.

Specialists speaking at the Yale conference, explained: - Even if we violate the ethical standards of psychiatry, it is necessary in our opinion to break the silence, because we fear we have too much to lose.

Dr. Gartner: - Studies indicate that psychiatric interviews are statistically the least reliable way to make a diagnosis.

Dr. Lee claimed that she does not make diagnoses about Trump "from afar," and noted that a professional should intervene when public safety is at risk. And Trump's recent behavior was expected to raise the level of that risk. The publisher of her book, on the other hand, explains that the publication is an answer to a question that Americans have long been asking themselves: what is wrong with Trump?

The discussion has moved to the pages of the most prestigious scientific titles. "The New England Journal of Medicine" ("NEJM"), in a late 2017 article, asks "Is it morally acceptable for psychiatrists to comment on Donald Trump's mental state?" The author - Dr. Claire Pouncey - is inclined to answer: YES. And she cites a provision from the Code of Medical Ethics, also applicable to psychiatrists: "A physician has a responsibility to participate in activities that contribute to the improvement of (....) and public health. "I believe that in the interest of promoting public health and safety, the APA should rather encourage the discussion that this book generates, Dr. Pouncey concludes. Former APA president Jeffrey Lieberman in Psychiatric News wrote of the book, "The Dangerous Case of D. Trump" that it "is not a serious, scholarly, civic work, but simply shoddy, indulgent, silly psychiatry."

Fanatical Trump supporters joined the discussion in their own way - they threatened to kill Dr. Bandy X. Lee.

Impeachment?

In December 2017, Dr. Lee, informed congressmen by letter about Donald Trump's mental state. Shortly thereafter, those on the committee questioned her about it. - They said they were very concerned about the threat posed by the president and his mental instability and impact on the nation, Dr. Lee later reported in an interview with CNN. She claimed that this concern is widespread among Democrats, and she also knows that Republicans have similar concerns, perhaps even at the same level. - He becomes very unstable in a short period of time. Neuropsychiatric tests are needed to assess his ability to perform his function, Dr. Lee concluded. - He seems to be losing touch with reality, veering toward conspiracy theories, she added. The Washington Post journalists calculated that in the 10 months of his presidency alone, i.e., up to November 14, 2017, the U.S. president has misstated the truth as many as 1,628 times. That works out to 5.4 lies per day.

Lee explained that when Trump gets stressed, an "attack module" is activated in him, making him an impulsive and potentially aggressive, explosive person. She pointed to his verbal aggression, bragging about his sexual conquests. She claimed that his threats of attack against the leader of North Korea and this country, show that Trump is on the verge of a psychotic breakdown. - This is a critical situation," she stressed.

Congressmen, on the same topic, also quizzed another psychiatrist, Dr. James Gilligan. Democrat Rosa DeLauro announced a motion to create a commission to investigate Trump's fitness for office. Republicans have not publicly supported the idea.

Following Dr. Lee's high-profile interview, a White House spokeswoman did not respond to reporters' questions about Trump's mental health. - I think the president and the people of this country should be concerned about the mental state of the leader of North Korea. - she said evasively.

The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that if the president is incapable of performing his duties, the vice president and Congress have the option to remove him from office.

Equal and more equal

"Fire and Fury: Inside Trump's White House" - this book by Michael Wolff, journalist and writer, describing Trump and his entourage, was released in early 2018. And immediately became an absolute bestseller - within 5 days on the market, more than a MILLION copies were sold. The publisher was already making reprints in the first week of sales.

Gathering material for this publication, Michael Wolff spoke with 200 people close to the US president. - 100 percent of them believe that he is incapable of carrying out his duties, Wolff said in an interview with CNN. According to Jeanne Suk Gerson of the New Yorker, both Democrats and Republicans agree that Trump is unfit for office due to his mental state. Many commentators and politicians have long described the U.S. president as a "madman" or a person of questionable mental stability.

On January 6, 2018, shortly after Dr. Lee's interview and the release of the book "Fire and Fury..." Donald Trump tweeted that he is not only an intelligent man, but a "genius, a very stable GENIUS." He emphasized.

January 13, 2018. CNN reported that 35 psychiatrists and mental health professionals have written to Trump's personal physician Dr. Ronny Jackson, urging that at least basic psychological tests be conducted on the president. The letter's authors noted that such evaluations are routine for millions of patients in the US aged 66 and older. Trump is 71 - the oldest president in US history. The White House responded to the letter, saying, "This is ridiculous and disgraceful."

But a few days later it turned out not to be so at all - the BBC reported that around January 10, 2018. Trump underwent a three-hour examination before military doctors at Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda. After the tests, Dr. Jackson announced: - The president's neurobiological functions and cognitive abilities are of no concern to me. Is the subject closed? Very doubtful.

Presidents are going out of their minds

Dr. Jonathan Davidson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in 2006 published a study in which he analyzed the biographies of the first 37 US presidents - from 1776 to 1974. He concluded that half of them suffered from mental illness, including 27 percent when they were in office. 24 percent of the presidents underwent depression at some point in their lives, including Abraham Lincoln. Richard Nixon suffered from the disease for a very long time after the Watergate scandal was revealed and he was removed from the presidency.

Source: "Health Service" No. 9-16/2018