B X Lee -- When a Psychiatrically-Dangerous President Needs Hospital-Level Care
When a Psychiatrically-Dangerous President Needs Hospital-Level Care
Silenced Psychiatrists, Other Physicians, and Other Mental Health Experts Need the Public's Support
I share a recent exchange I have had with senior members of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW):
Good morning I.,
… I want to update you on the letter-writing campaign and share my thoughts about moving forward….
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the letter-writing campaign stalled soon after it went online…. I was frustrated by the lack of responses from the many national organizations that received my emails….
Ironically, I discovered … “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” … last week and just finished reading it (and made many notes on it). There was at least one reference in almost every chapter to nuclear weapons, nuclear war, and/or DT’s finger on the button, and the last three chapters tied it up so well. Brilliant work, with diverse, sound, expert voices of reason, speaking with extraordinary clarity and strength.
I noted that Bandy Lee is the band leader here, and has conducted a magnificent symphony. Now I see that there is a 2025 update “The Much More Dangerous....” Oy Vey; I need to order that right away, and need to catch up on all the articles written on this topic since the 2017 publication.
So, could you please also share this with Bandy. I value any … suggestions for carrying this important work forward (time is short and the waters rise)…..
L.
Dear L.,
I am not really surprised by the paucity of response, though it is all the more perplexing in some ways given that the message that Trump is dangerously unstable has become absolutely mainstream over the last few months….
In any case still worth pushing this message…. At some point the madness may cause a tipping point and the more we do to draw attention to it, the sooner that may happen.
Best,
I.
Dear I., dear L. (may I?):
Thank you, I., for forwarding me this very kind message from L., whose words humble me, as both of you have done such amazing work for many decades, which I only hope to emulate!
I am exceedingly grateful for your jumping in so boldly and actively as you have, at this critical point in humanity’s history. My primary reason for becoming so concerned as to come forth publicly in 2017 was precisely because of his access to nuclear weapons. I had worked with dangerous individuals like he before, but none had the ability to annihilate human civilization!
As for why this critically important statement by the most authoritative voices in medicine is not gaining any traction, I have a theory. Actually, it is more than a theory but direct personal experience:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/04/muzzled-psychiatry-time-crisis/
A medical association preoccupied with protecting its federal funding … and a jealous former APA president made sure that any comment from a qualified medical professional would be received as “unethical”, unwarranted, and not to be covered by any news organization (the APA met with the New York Times and apparently circulated a “memo” that put the fear of lawsuits in major news organizations).
The people have not bought into this narrative, but news organizations have. This is how we went from being the number one topic of national conversation to “disappearing” overnight from the major media, never to recover. I wonder now, at this stage while everyone is talking about this issue, and many frustrated that they are not hearing from us, whether it might be timing … to make an even bolder statement.
Best regards,
Bandy
Countless members of the public have contacted me lately, asking why we have not issued a physician’s emergency certificate. The answer is straightforward: physicians cannot unilaterally compel treatment. They act either with the patient’s consent or pursuant to a court order initiated by someone with standing—typically, a directly-affected family member or a coworker (in this case, the public should recognize its own role as the president’s employers!).
For emergency exceptions, which are routine in psychiatry, there needs to be a direct examination. However, the APA fundamentally reframed—not by law or policy but by public perception—what counts as an “examination”, at the beginning of the Trump era. For example, before the war on Iraq, a group of British psychiatrists contemplated whether to detain George W. Bush during his visit to the United Kingdom. The accepted question was whether he met the legal threshold for emergency psychiatric intervention—not whether they had conducted an office visit (or whether a president had psychiatric “immunity”). Had they gone through with it, the courts and the profession would have expected them to prove their expert qualifications, to justify their clinical reasoning, and to demonstrate that they based their evaluation on sufficiently extensive, qualified observation (note that political considerations do not have a place in a medical reasoning).
Not anymore.
The APA declared that, for a powerful political figure—not just any public figure, since the same rules did not apply to us—unless there has been an office visit and an in-person examination, no observation could count, no analysis was valid, and all comments were “unethical”. The result was extraordinary: medical experts became the only experts of any domain prevented from speaking about their area of expertise, precisely when their expertise was most urgently needed. This outcome was not difficult to predict, which is why I called the APA’s intervention, from the very beginning, “insider trading.”
I was among the first to express publicly Donald Trump’s need for hospital-level care, and indeed I finally made arrangements to travel to Washington at the onset of the Covid pandemic. Even if I were arrested in the process, the ensuing court proceedings would have provided an opportunity for me to present the medical evidence publicly, and to give a judge the possibility of ordering emergency intervention. A colleague experienced in publicity persuaded me that we would have greater impact with our Prescription for Survival (which was influential and, many believe, contributed to Joe Biden’s election).
I, of course, continue to be convinced that a proper medical intervention is needed and would argue for it, if given the opportunity. But no physician can do it alone. At the time I almost traveled to Washington, I was not forgotten to the public and had not yet been stripped of my professional standing; now, our credibility is far less, while the threshold for physicians to be heard is far higher. Therefore—dear public—it is your turn to claim your rights! You are not passive observers but the citizens whose safety, constitutional order, and future are at stake! You know that we are standing by—and together we just may accomplish the necessary.
Announcement:
Dr. Bandy X. Lee will hold her next “emergency psychiatric meeting”—it will continue to be an emergency as long as it is ongoing—on Monday, August 17, 2026, at 5 p.m. EDT / 2 p.m. PDT. She will hold her next planning meeting for Survival University on Thursday, August 27, 2026, at 5 p.m. EDT / 2 p.m. PDT. Paid subscribers will receive a link an hour before meeting times.
Discussion about this post
https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/when-a-president-is-psychologically
The APA has betrayed it's membership and The People of the United States and world. Just as the Nation will have to revisit The Constitution. Professional Mental Health practitioners need establish a new organization to represent them.
Thank you again. Watching Trump's response to the revelation of a horribly invalid, basically scapegoating indictment of that Olympic athlete practically drove me crazy. But why should I be surprised that he would yet again "double-down" and attack the judge and the reporter who asked about it, as he continued to claim vandalism of the reflecting pool? His shamefully juvenile (infantile?) behavior in denial and projection is there for all to see. Also, notice how he always has a group of henchmen standing stone-faced behind him as he sits at his desk? As if it would give him some strong-man support--not! And the commentators addressed the episode as yet another news event--business as usual! Brian Tyler Cohen came right out and called him sick, which I applauded to the TV as being some relief of the frustration over how Trump is still treated as a normal politician. VOTE in November--it may be yet another chance to help us all.