B X Lee -- The United States of Suicidality (and How to Save Ourselves)
The United States of Suicidality (and How to Save Ourselves)
We Should Pay Heed when 36 of the Most Eminent Medical Authorities are Alerting against the Greatest Dangers to Society Possible
“Trump self-deals, lies and seems to fall asleep in meetings. The media treats it all as ‘priced in,’” reports the Guardian. There are two remarkable illustrations in the article: first, its observation of how malleable the human mind is—it will accept almost anything if conditioned for it—and second, its own lack of awareness that there is a medical explanation for what is happening, why, and what the appropriate response would be. The article opens:
His social media posts are unhinged. He seems to fall asleep in meetings. He proudly proclaims he’s not thinking “even a little bit” about Americans’ personal finances in talks with Iran. And he lies constantly about the supposed success of the war with Iran he started for no good reason.
That’s just the start…. There’s the ruination of the Kennedy Center, the building of a ballroom (or bunker?) to replace the White House East Wing, and the wrecking ball that the Trump-aligned supreme court has taken to the voting rights of Black Americans. There’s the endless self-dealing and the abuse of the justice department’s intended purpose. And yet, the mainstream media doesn’t make much of any of that.
Nor does the Guardian. It could have mentioned—especially given the coverage by the British Medical Journal and the Independent—our Statement of Medical Concerns entered into the Congressional Record, but it implicitly accepts not mentioning us as, “priced in.” Even when it prominently covered former White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly’s use of our book as an “owner’s manual” for reining in a dangerous president during his first presidency, possibly saving the globe from nuclear war—covering that news story was already a lot, and it will not deviate so far from mainstream media as to connect the dots.
This is not to criticize the Guardian, which does much more than most, but to demonstrate the effects of a mental health pandemic, in spite of the best efforts of neutral or even Trump-opposing publications: they end up subtly supporting him. The New York Times may conduct a thousand investigative articles on Donald Trump’s crooked deeds, but none of them will make a dent as long as it assiduously avoids publishing a single article on the need for psychiatric expertise with respect to a global psychiatric crisis (rational communication will not penetrate where there is no mental capacity—and this issue needs to be addressed first, by experts). Even the illustrious authors I assembled, such as Robert Jay Lifton or Judith Herman, whom the Times used to feature regularly before they spoke out against Trump—vanished completely after they did. The periodical did not recognize that the public would suffer to the exact degree that we were “disappeared”.
In this vacuum, charlatans such as John Gartner appear. When, at my Yale conference, he as a member of the audience jumped up on stage, grabbed the podium, and spoke longer than any of the actual speakers, appalled senior faculty exclaimed: “He’s just like Trump!” That was only the beginning: he continued to coopt our movement until he destroyed it—becoming the very reason more than a dozen chairs of psychiatry withdrew their support at the time, why those who initially opposed “the Goldwater rule” came to advocate for it, and why I have turned down countless interview requests, because I did not wish to be paired with him. He continues to throw “red meat” at a deprived public—anything that will provoke sensationalism—to the masses he partly caused to be famished, when he placed himself before the cause (we see from Donald Trump that it is impossible for a malignant narcissist to support any cause other than himself, and in the process sabotages every other cause):
The claim of frontotemporal dementia in particular has stuck…. Diagnosing someone with this condition from afar is not only irresponsible—it’s impossible.
He is too reckless even to recognize that he does not have the medical credentials to diagnose (all psychiatric and neurological diagnoses need medical clearance), let alone know when it is not even possible to diagnose. He relentlessly plagiarizes from everyone to appear intelligent, throwing in big words to sound like he knows something—as he monitors my Substack to modulate his façade—but a true expert can see through his ignorance. He is again riding on the wave of our Statement to the U.S. Senate, never clarifying that he was never invited—indeed, explicitly banned—from being one of the signatories.
Insanity is often defined as: “The state of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” I have a personal definition of mental health: “The ability not to get in the way of one’s natural growth, healing, and thriving.” Sanity is as simple as that: not getting in one’s own way, whatever the reason one gives for it, and a whole society can equally decide to embrace health.
Fortunately, more of the press is catching onto the damage Gartner has done, by relentlessly placing himself before all the eminent experts, continuing to cite his Johns Hopkins affiliation while concealing that he was forced out (just as Jeffrey Lieberman was finally forced out, not because of academic censorship but because of their malignant personalities), and exploiting the public’s lack of mental health knowledge.
Huffington Post is now distinguishing responsibly citing danger as a reason for mandatory examination:
Americans hoping that President Donald Trump’s third “annual” physical exam over a span of 13 months on Tuesday might offer insights into his increasingly bizarre and incomprehensible statements and social media posts are likely to be disappointed….
Bandy Lee, a psychiatrist and former professor at Yale School of Medicine, said [Walter Reed military] doctors do, though, have an ethical responsibility to the American people…. “Of course, the White House physician has a duty, and so do we. The public is being shortchanged, and endangered, to the maximum,” said Lee….
“The incoherence is worrisome, possibly dangerous,” said Allen Dyer, a retired psychiatrist and retired George Washington University professor who recommends a full battery of tests…. Dyer, in 1973, helped craft the so-called “Goldwater rule” that he says has been misinterpreted to mean that mental health professionals should never offer their analyses of political figures.
Indeed, Dyer repeatedly emphasized to me that “the Goldwater rule” was intended to be an affirmative obligation to educate society regarding mental health issues that may surround a public figure, without diagnosing—which, as stated above, is impossible, as tempting as it may be to do so. The article cites how twenty mental health experts wrote to the White House physician, calling on him to act on the dangers and to respond to: “the explicit concerns on the part of 36 renowned medical experts and mental health professionals, now entered into the Congressional Record.”
As I have stated multiple times—if not for Gartner’s giving the American Psychiatric Association ammunition to shut us down—I firmly believe Donald Trump would have been removed early in his first term. Congress members themselves told us so, as had the revered journalist Bill Moyers. The world would have hailed us for a difficult but rational response to a psychiatric crisis—instead of our becoming the laughingstock of the world, a cautionary tale of how democracy can collapse overnight, and the worst and most dangerous “Banana Republic” in human history—before his pathological hold on his “MAGA” base was complete.
However, there is some good coverage from the fringe press. And an unexpected, sensible response came from a pulmonologist:
NBC News medical analyst Dr. Vin Gupta says there are issues with Trump that just aren’t adding up…. While Gupta was unsure if Trump was showing signs of multi-organ dysfunction, he admitted to having “serious concerns about his executive functioning.”
“We are having some real issues here with impulse control because … any reasonable person would say that if you have to threaten genocide you’re not in a strong negotiating position, or you have to revise your negotiating tactics, that isn’t a normal way to negotiate,” said Gupta, questioning if Trump had the executive functioning “to organize his thoughts to make considered rational decisions under stress.”
He is responding the way I had wished former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci had. If Fauci had simply said: “It is my responsibility, as a trained physician, to point out when consultation with another medical specialty such as psychiatry is warranted.” He helped save lives, but he could have helped save hundreds of thousands, if not a million, more. Now, we have another chance.
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung said: “What we do not make conscious emerges later as fate.” We have the choice now to stop resigning ourselves to self-imposed, “fate”. Entertaining ourselves with whether Donald Trump has “frontotemporal dementia” or “psychosis” is a distraction and, until now, an obstacle. What we need to do is to recognize that, at this stage, what we can and should evaluate is dangerousness—this is why I titled my book as I have—unfitness to be in office for another day, the need for removal from access to weapons and the military, and a mandatory evaluation, whether or not the dangerous individual consents to it. This is the unequivocal medical standard of care, of which the public needs to be aware.
Announcement:
Dr. Bandy X. Lee is in the process of establishing SURVIVAL UNIVERSITY. Please use the contact form to join and to help in this effort. Our first planning meeting is tonight, May 29, 2026, at 8 p.m. EDT / 5 p.m. PDT.
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https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/the-united-states-of-suicidality
This investigation, a continuing attempt to contain a psychopath in the Presidency, shows how determined our heroine Dr Bandy X Lee is to broadcast Trumps inability to govern.
Dr Bandy X Lee
I have great respect for you. You persist as a good patriot would