Mental Health Experts Warned against the Dangers but were Silenced
Mental Health Experts Warned against the Dangers but were Silenced
I Have Dubbed the American Psychiatric Association’s Silencing of Mental Health Experts, ‘the Greatest Act of Medical Malpractice in Human History’
The British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a rare, nuanced view of “the Goldwater rule” debate:
amid war, tariffs, and internet memes, is it right for medical professionals to wade into the debate about the U.S. president’s mental health and fitness for office?...
Such questions have only escalated in the rollercoaster 15 months of his second presidency, including a full scale war in the Middle East….
Concerns about Trump’s mental health were raised during his first presidency (2017-2021). In April 2017, a conference was held at Yale University at which a group of psychiatrists discussed Trump’s mental health and the “duty to warn” others about the risks his health posed.
The following month Bandy Lee, then assistant clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine and conference organiser, declared: “We have an obligation to speak about Donald Trump’s mental health issues because many lives and our survival as a species may be at stake.”
She said that Trump … “has a great need for adulation. He is angry if reality does not meet his needs. People have been expecting him to settle into his role and become normal or more ‘presidential,’ but that does not ordinarily happen among those with such personality traits. In fact, what we’re seeing is a creation of his own reality, a reality that will meet Trump’s own emotional needs and the need to impose that reality on others, [which] could place us all at great risk.”
Lee went on to edit The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,… in which 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts warned about the dangers posed by Trump’s mental health and psychological instability.
Around that time Lance Dodes, a former assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a contributor to the book,… said that when Trump says things that go against reality, acting in ways that seem incomprehensible to others, he reveals aspects of his own mental health. “The simple explanation for it, which people don’t want to hear, is that he’s not in control of himself,” he said…. “he loses track of reality because it doesn’t fit what he needs to believe.”
Donald Trump’s own niece Mary Trump—herself [with a clinical psychology degree]—”has no problem calling Donald Trump a narcissist, and she also identifies additional signs of antisocial personality disorder, dependent personality disorder and a substance induced sleep disorder (the dozen daily Diet Cokes).”
Such explosive quotes … again raise the question of how much medical professionals can and should speak about a person’s health when they are not the person’s physician….
One of the original authors of [the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA’s)]Goldwater rule has said that the original guideline has become misconstrued and been interpreted as a “gagging order.” It was intended as a principle and a matter of professional judgment, rather than an absolute prohibition, Allen Dyer, professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Services, wrote in September 2020…. “I hope at the end of the day, in the face of a president who respects [no boundaries], we will not regret saying too little.”
Bandy Lee … argued in 2018 that, in discussing the risks posed by Trump’s mental health, she was not diagnosing the president and so not breaking the Goldwater rule. Instead, she was discussing Trump’s “dangerousness,” which she said could be evaluated remotely based on the situation.
She said that his behaviour showed that he may be a danger to the American public. “Under stress he has shown that he goes into attack mode and seems to resort to violence at times of feeling threatened or feeling powerless in some way,” she said. “He uses violence to burnish his sense of power, and that is [mental health professionals’] great concern.” She argued that, in the interest of public health, she and other psychiatrists discussing the issue were “ethically charged” with speaking out….
Commenting to The BMJ in April 2026, Lee says that psychiatrists and other health professionals now “more than ever” have a duty to speak out about Donald Trump. She thinks that overzealous interpretation of the Goldwater rule has led to a “media blackout” around psychiatrists discussing concerns around Trump’s mental health. “We are at this critical point of danger, precisely because the public has been unable to hear from mental health experts in unprecedented ways, over the past eight years or so,” she says.
Lee maintains that a distinction needs to be made between what is done for the patient and what is done for society. “Diagnosing, through a personal examination with confidential information, is done for the patient, while detecting signs of danger, based on publicly available data, is done for society,” she says. “The first should not be done, since Donald Trump is not [our] patient, while the second should be done, as it is one of our primary responsibilities and can be legally binding in some cases.”
Dodes tells The BMJ that health professionals have a responsibility to speak out and that he would like to see professional psychological organisations stating their position on these issues, and supporting others to do so. “Sadly, the major psychological organisations have been swayed by self-interest, much as other institutions in society,” he says. “Fear of antagonising those in power, losing tax exempt status, or losing favour with those in the general public who favour Trump, have stood ahead of their duty to warn”….
Richard Friedman, [after berating for years in his New York Times column mental health experts who would speak up about Donald Trump, finally] wrote: “If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness.”
By modifying “the Goldwater rule,” in March 2017, for federal funding in the first Trump administration—the reason I held my Yale conference the following month—the APA essentially issued a gag order on “any opinion of a professional” (any professionally-informed comment on public information), not just restricted “professional opinion” (mostly diagnosis). By stating explicitly that any comment was absolutely prohibited (no concern could override it, including national security!), it fractured the psychiatric community, caused a vast exodus from the Association, chilled any remaining speech, and ultimately condemned society to a psychiatric, dystopian hell.
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"the American Psychiatric Association’s Silencing of Mental Health Experts, ‘the Greatest Act of Medical Malpractice in Human History’"
https://samray.substack.com/p/psychiatry-and-psychology-are-failing
"Mental Health Experts Warned against the Dangers but were Silenced".
This is precisely the reason why Americans need to end the discussions and take immediate action at getting Trump out of office. This lunatic operates like a Mafia Boss on steroids!!! (The Famed Mafia Boss, Al Capone, went to federal prison for far less than what Trump has done)!!! And to top it off, Trump recently signed an illegal executive order, requiring every single one of you with a bank account, to prove you have American Citizenship, otherwise, you may not ever see your money again!!! (A driver's license is not going to be sufficient enough)!!! It's a way of making all of you subservient to him, otherwise, you can count on being destitute as hell!!!