B X Lee -- ‘Trump’s Mental Decline is Alarming—I’m One of the 36 Doctors Asking for an Intervention’
‘Trump’s Mental Decline is Alarming—I’m One of the 36 Doctors Asking for an Intervention’
‘The Question They Have is How So Many Can Listen to these Sirens for So Long and Choose to Do Nothing’
On May 12, 2026, American historian Heather Cox Richardson opened her Newsletter with:
The biggest story in the country, today and always, is that the president of the United States is mentally unwell.
However, there is no mention of our efforts in her or any other American media. We must go to the foreign press for that, such as the Independent:
Just before he hopped on Air Force One for his flight to China to meet President Xi Jinping, Donald Trump posted … an AI-generated image of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi swimming in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the water full of effluent and rubbish. Above, it read: “Dumacrats Love Sewage”…. When Donald Trump isn’t sharing delusional AI imagery of those he dislikes, he is pitching himself as the messiah (remember the AI-generated image of himself as Jesus last month?) and, in between raging on social media throughout the night, he’s mixing up his words or even appearing to nod off during televised briefings during the day….
A growing chorus of medical and legal professionals … has made their thoughts abundantly clear. In late April, a group of 36 leading U.S. doctors with expertise in mental health had seen enough. Together, they issued a statement calling for Trump’s immediate removal from office for medical reasons.
In it, they said: “... we are compelled to warn of a President of the United States who is increasingly a danger to the public. We do not take our statement, and the responsibility that comes with making it, lightly.” That statement, which includes signatures from two Nobel Prize recipients, was then entered into the official Congressional Record—the archive of American legislative history.
Among those sounding the alarm was Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and violence expert who first spoke out about Trump’s mental health soon after his first election in 2016. Lee told The Independent: “I believe it is no longer difficult for even the layperson to see that he is in need of immediate, even hospital-level, care.”
Then, on 11 May, the constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein wrote an open letter to Congress together with lawyer and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, urging it to enact legislation under the 25th Amendment, which clarifies the transfer of power if a president is incapacitated.
“Every day Mr. Trump remains in office is a roll of the dice with the survival of the species,” Fein and Nader wrote. “President Trump might employ nuclear weapons against Iran in a fit of rage … which would not be ignored by China, Russia and Pakistan. Vice President J.D. Vance and principal officers of the executive departments have displayed spinelessness in response to Mr. Trump’s dictator-like rants, disqualifying them from fairly appraising his ability to discharge the powers and duties of the White House”….
Many psychiatrists adhere to the “Goldwater Rule,” which discourages diagnosing public figures without personally examining them…. While this wasn’t a diagnosis per se, they based their conclusions, they say, on “voluminous evidence from the historical record of the president’s bizarre and impulsive behaviour, rambling digressions, factual confusions, unexplained sudden changes of course in strategic matters, both national and international, and his deeply impaired judgement.”
An accompanying statement concluded that the most worrisome examples were his outbursts of what was termed “extreme, seemingly uncontrollable rage,” such as his multiple threats to destroy Iran. Lee told The Independent that Trump’s grandiose, wishful fantasies and images “are signs of a psychotic spiral…. A desperate attempt to counteract the total helplessness one feels when one is losing one’s mind”….
Since the statement was released, she noted in her Substack that Trump has “exhibited even more signs of grandiosity, e.g., posting images of himself on social media shaking hands with God, acting like Jesus and dressing as a pope. And he has continued nocturnal bingeing on social media posts that are filled with accusations of multiple conspiracies against him, as often as 150 times a night.”
While she maintains she is not diagnosing Trump as she would a patient, Lee says she has a positive obligation to improve society and better public health, which includes acting “if anyone is a danger to society—in fact, danger for psychiatric reasons is a mandated duty for which we could be held legally liable for not responding.”
From a psychiatric standpoint, what does a pattern of sleeping four hours or fewer do to executive function, impulse control and the ability to make life-or-death decisions? Lee says that whether caused by anxiety, depression, mania, stress or substances, lack of sleep will worsen any diminished capacity in a person, including executive function, impulse control and critical decision-making.
“We know that he appears to fall asleep during important functions…. So, the fateful, life-or-death decisions that are handed to him, or that he takes upon himself despite not being equipped to handle them, imperil our nation and all the globe”….
In December, Trump insisted he was “sharper than I was 25 years ago”—before, roughly 15 minutes later, appearing to struggle to keep his eyes open as his Commerce Secretary spoke. Lee says that it’s a rule in psychiatry that the more serious the impairment, the greater the denial that anything is wrong. “In fact,” she says, “lack of insight is one of the symptoms of grave psychiatric illness,… and the damage is even greater when one cannot tolerate the thought of any defect or failure”….
As America enters its third month of being in an unsanctioned war with Iran, which has sparked market shocks across the world, many believe the president’s inability to understand what he has unleashed, combined with an incoherence in his messaging, is leading to increasing alarm among those inside the White House, too….
Lee says that, whatever the cause, she believes that Trump poses a grave danger to the nation and to the world for psychiatric reasons. “This is the only criterion we need to implement immediate treatment, including involuntary stabilisation, during which tests can be done to distinguish whether he has dementia, a substance problem, a major mental illness, a dangerous personality disorder, or any combination of these that would produce his presentation.
“Now, with Bruce Fein, we will be urging Congress to appoint itself the ‘other body’ that the 25th Amendment allows and to hold hearings with experts immediately.”
Announcement:
Please join a CRITICAL PSYCHIATRIC MEETING tomorrow, May15, 2026, at 8 p.m. EDT / 5 p.m. PDT.
Please encourage your family, friends, and colleagues to join!
The link for the Critical Psychiatric Meeting will be sent to paid subscribers at 7 p.m. EDT / 4 p.m. PDT on the day of the meeting.
In a functioning democracy, the citizenry has fair access to journalism as well as expertise! We will discuss what is happening with our Statement of Medical Concerns, where the media and Congress are, and the people’s critical role in this moment of national psychiatric emergency. The link will be sent to paid subscribers an hour before the meeting (apologies for making it paid, but it is in part for attendees’ protection, given past hackings).
Discussion about this post
I’m just a grandmother and I can see him slipping every day, cursing more, like Dr. G said it’s only going to get worse, stay tuned
https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/trumps-mental-decline-is-alarmingim
And all these supposed representatives of the US citizenry stand by and DO NOTHING...This is just beyond belief...WHAT does Trump have to do to convince congress and/or his cabinet and/or the leadership in the Pentagon that enough is enough??? Perhaps if he exposes himself at a press conference?? Would that be a bridge too far??? Thank you Dr Lee for your ongoing heroic efforts...May they finally bear fruit....