Critical Meeting on the Ongoing Presidential Psychiatric Emergency

Today, July 17, 2026, at 6 p.m. EDT / 3 p.m. PDT

Bandy X. Lee

Jul 17, 2026

∙ Paid

*A link is below, and will be sent an hour before the meeting for paid subscribers.

An eminent former National Institute of Health (NIH) physician-scientist and emeritus professor at one of the nation’s top research universities got in touch with me. Drawing on decades of experience at the highest levels of medicine, neuroscience, and academic research, and having specialized in cognitive impairment during his last five years of practice, he stated:

I believe that Trump’s physician, Sean Barbarella, D.O., is committing medical malpractice by pretending that Trump is mentally competent. I have reported Barbarella to the Virginia Medical Board because of this issue. I believe he should lose his license….

I feel compelled to fight the good fight because the risk of his impaired and irrational thinking is so high. [An] eminent Bioethicist … agrees with me and has been very supportive. I have alerted Senator Ed Markey, and Governors Gavin Newsome of CA and [J.B.] Pritzker of IL of my concerns.

He also asked me: “How did you become so brave?”

I told him we were all becoming brave—the situation demands it. This is what happened with the physicians of the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), when they jumped into the fray last April. It is what happened with the thousands of mental health professionals from around the world who joined to create the World Mental Health Coalition in 2017. It is what happened when dozens of mental health experts helped me bring together:

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Mental Health Experts Assess a President (2017);

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Mental Health Experts Assess a President (2019);

The More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 40 Mental Health Experts Warn Anew (2024); and

The Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 50 Mental Health Experts Warn Anew (2025).

Now, we are putting together: The Extremely Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.

Still, we cannot do it alone; without the people’s help, there is a great barrier to what we can say and do. Here is a message from the public that demonstrates it:

Bandy,

Deep thanks and respect for all your work and courage/integrity. At this juncture (mid-terms), “national emergency” will be claimed, violence will ensue.... I think it’s important for the APA’s stance (apparently protecting their federal funding instead of recognizing the critical need of updating the Goldwater Rule) [to change]. Regardless of whether the VP and majority of cabinet members can be swayed, it seems like a very powerful influence could be exerted if we could free up the voices of all psychiatrists/depth psychologists and get national media coverage…. Please offer any guidance or suggestions. Psychology needs to finally take a seat at the table with the “hard” sciences and in the political world.

That is exactly what is needed. The New York Times commissioned a psychiatrist to write an opinion article for the first time, for which she interviewed me many months ago, but she still appears not to be able to publish her article. Columnist-intellectual Thomas Edsall reached out to me first thing when he was writing one of his first articles for the New York Times on psychiatrists in this era, but only my quotes were excluded. Now, a psychologist has reached out to me to attempt to write an opinion article, and he asks:

Major news outlets, to this day, do not call on psychiatrists to explain Trump’s behavior. They readily call upon admirals and generals, ex-ambassadors and other experts. Why is this? Do these outlets honor the Goldwater rule? If so, what motivates them to do so? If they don’t honor the Goldwater rule, why do they treat trained behavioral experts differently that all other experts?

I told him that American Psychiatric Association’s (APA’s) propaganda worked. Given that the Trump administration has risen—and sustained itself—primarily through rhetoric and not reality, shows how essential it was for mental health experts—the most qualified experts to assess the situation—to speak.

That is why I warned, as early as 2017, that the APA’s position represented one of the first signs of authoritarianism: the elevation of authority and power above truth, reality, and even science. “The Goldwater rule”—the APA’s own, insignificant guideline that no other mental health association or licensing board has adopted—originated as a concession to protect a politician’s ego (as then-Senator Barry Goldwater required, before he mellowed in his later years). It should never have overridden national security, as the APA modified it to do shortly after Donald Trump’s first inauguration. This was achieved through public disinformation, since the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Geneva, instituted after the Nuremberg trials, still obligates physicians not to be complicit with destructive regimes—and by far supersedes a minor guild “rule”.

When a mental health pandemic is raging and public health intervention imperative, the most powerful tool available to public health is education. This is all the more true for public mental health. Depriving the public of needed knowledge, information, and above all awareness of its own authority is what brought us to this moment of critical, imminent, and existential danger.

Anthony Davis, host of the Weekend Show who brings rare psychological awareness, articulates the situation clearly:

The media is not very good at receiving this message that Trump is a danger to the world…. So, how do people come to terms with this collective anxiety, and how do we navigate ourselves mentally through this period, which is unprecedented? The fact that we are actually having to worry about the threat that Trump might decide that if he is going down, he is taking the whole planet down with him.

I just don’t trust him not to want to crash everything…. the economy is crashing, albeit slowly and silently. And with world trade, he has broken that. With the energy crisis and the Strait of Hormuz, he has broken that. He has broken the reflecting pool, for goodness’ sake. I mean, he has demolished half the White House…. he is a destroyer, and taking those red flags suggests to me that he will destroy the United States before they catch him.

That is exactly our current crisis. There is no more room for hesitation or doubt. Now is the time for ordinary citizens to find extraordinary courage—the circumstances necessitate it. Part of this is recognizing that psychiatric knowledge is power: people’s power. Knowledge brings clarity, quiets anxiety, and expands possibilities. It frees us from learned helplessness. Put into action, it becomes confirmation that solutions exist, kindles hope, and forges the resolve needed to topple regimes that were once thought unassailable.

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Announcement:

*Please join us for an ONGOING PSYCHIATRIC EMERGENCY MEETING on Friday, July 17, 2026, at 6 p.m. EDT / 3 p.m. PDT. The present situation is unsustainable and should not be tolerated! An ongoing emergency makes it more emergent, not less. A meeting link will be sent to paid subscribers an hour before (apologies for making it paid, but it is in part for attendees’ protection, given previous hackings)—and in the below.

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is inviting you to a live session:

Time: Jul 17, 2026 06:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting... 

https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/critical-meeting-on-the-ongoing-presidential