B X Lee -- The Unrecognized Psychiatric Plague
The Unrecognized Psychiatric Plague
Knowledge Denied is Catastrophe Unleashed
As I continue to speak about the American Psychiatric Association (APA), many may wonder: What does this have to do with anything? What if I told you, without the APA’s intervention, Donald Trump would have been removed from office early in his first term? What if you learned, if not the APA’s intervention, millions of lives globally may have been saved during the Covid pandemic—or there may not have been a pandemic at all? What if you found out, had the APA not intervened to silence experts, there would be no second Trump presidency, no endless global wars, no destruction of the global economy, and no end to American democracy? The sheer destructiveness of mental pathology would not have needed to be lived through to be believed, and the very unfamiliarity of the topic itself is indicative of the damage the APA has done.
When the Black Death swept through Europe in 1347 and spread with extraordinary speed, contemporaries had never experienced anything like it. They increasingly described it as something that was inevitable, which occurred everywhere and threatened everyone. Italian humanist Francesco Petrarch famously described it as a “universal plague,” unlike anything previously known. Flagellants traveled through European towns, publicly whipping themselves to express collective penance, with hopes that God’s Apocalyptic anger might lift. Few would have found fathomable that it was, like any infectious process, something that grows exponentially over time and could have been stemmed or eliminated altogether in the early stages. Today, the infectious agent, Yersinia pestis, never disappeared. It continues to circulate among wild rodents and fleas and infects about seven Americans a year. What transformed the Plague from a civilization-ending catastrophe into a negligible nuisance was not eradication of the bacterium but knowledge, understanding of its transmission, the development of antibiotics, better sanitation, and—above all—education.
The leadership of the APA probably cannot face what it has done—even as it silenced much of its membership from within, which revolted, resigned, and wrote protest letters against the organization’s destructive public actions at the time. Placing institutional profit over protection of the public, it may have acquired unprecedented federal funding under the first Trump administration and a brand new, shiny building in the middle of Washington, DC—but at what cost? Since that time, it appeared to do its own penance in other areas, trying to be extra progressive in areas of racial justice, climate, or social determinants of mental health. However, it has not owned up to its central role in the core issue of our time: a psychiatric Plague that has now gone as far as to threaten the imminent survival of our species. At least in medieval Europe the medical knowledge was not yet available; here, the mental health knowledge was at unimaginable levels of abundance and yet blocked as if it did not exist—resulting in a level of suffering and damage that is comparable to the difference between 1347 and 2026 for Y. pestis.
In a previous interview, when Anthony Davis of “the Weekend Show” asked what was happening with the APA, I stated it was, “doubling down.” Below is a much more detailed report by APA member and astute observer Dr. Ravi Chandra, titled: “APA President Promotes Psychiatric Nativism, Isolationism, and Abandonment of Professional Ethics—in the Name of the ‘Strategic Plan’”:
APA’s president Mark Rapaport attempts to define the mission of organizational psychiatry in his recent essay “What APA is—and is Not.” He expresses … the APA’s stance of compassion for the those who suffer extreme mental health consequences of violence.
But then, instead of expanding his concern, [he] writes “Our association cannot resolve geopolitical disputes or adjudicate competing historical claims,” and therefore should avoid talking about them.
Dr. Chandra recalls the uproar that occurred within the APA over this year’s Chester Pierce Award Lecture, honoring the late, great African-American psychiatrist. The APA, bowing to an intense pressure campaign, had indefinitely “postponed” Dr. Mansoor Malik’s human rights lecture on the Gaza genocide, causing rupture and schism within the organization.
[Dr. Malik would have] delved into the collective psychology that is behind mass violence, most particularly between Israel and Gaza…. yet Dr. Rapaport would seemingly place a moratorium on even discussing it.
Dr. Chandra continues his incisive observations:
The aggressive, annihilating, and disintegrating nature of international conflict of course makes a beeline to our psyches, organizations, as well as patient encounters, and trigger palpable and even predictable institutional defenses and psychic fallout. There is a perceptible causal chain, for example, between the fall of the Soviet Union (an international conflict); the reign of Putin; Putin’s influence on the rise of Trump and discord on the American body politic; conspiracy theories and RFK Jr.; and what we are facing in mental health and social well-being. This is just one of the causal chains that Dr. Rapaport’s version of the APA will not name, explore, or touch with a 10-foot pole—to our great detriment.
Instead, a highly-resourceful association has
effectively shut down communication, reflection, and collaboration within the APA—ultimately leading to a betrayal of our professional ethics and quest for humanitarianism, mental health, and social well-being for all people.
Is it any wonder that such a resource-rich society as the United States is engaging in self-destructive behavior, drowning in deaths of despair, wreaking havoc on global security, and driving humanity to collective suicide? Psychiatry, replete with incredibly valuable knowledge for this time, has decided essentially to become a useless field.
Dr. Chandra is even more relentless in his criticism:
Rapaport may be the Neville Chamberlain of our profession, or at least akin to the White Moderates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote of in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”….
It is difficult to approach issues of power and violence, but there is a whole branch of psychiatry—forensics—which does just that. Psychologist Robert Hare developed a psychopathy checklist which is used to assess dangerousness of criminal offenders. Psychiatrists such as Bandy Lee, Robert Jay Lifton, and Judith Herman have used Hare’s Checklist to assess the dangerousness of President Donald Trump…. Their professional opinions should not be sidelined or dismissed—but that’s precisely what Dr. Rapaport is proposing, in line with the APA’s benighted “Goldwater rule.”
[I]nterpersonal, social, political, national, and global [conflicts] are often emotionally charged and potentially divisive. But they form a major aspect of the wounds which keep our diverse communities ill, alienated, and at risk of great harm…. Our lane is—or should be—compassionate, insightful, and helpful relating to distress.
Otherwise, what is the point of being in a healing profession at all?
Announcement:
Dr. Bandy X. Lee is appearing weekly on Meidas Touch, on “The Weekend Show” with Anthony Davis! (there are signs of active suppression of the information she has to give, and therefore please be sure to spread the word!). Now begins a critical period when much burden lies on the people to protect themselves. Attend her interactive, strategy sessions, such as her next Project for Human Survival planning meeting on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 5 p.m. EDT / 2 p.m. PDT, or her action-oriented, “the Ongoing Presidential Psychiatric Emergency” meeting on Saturday, October 17, 2026, at 3 p.m. EDT / 12 noon PDT (paid subscribers will receive links an hour before; please contact her if you cannot afford a subscription but would like to attend).
Discussion about this post
https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/the-unrecognized-psychiatric-plague
Someone should sue the APA
As a marriage/family therapist and trauma clinician for the past 16 years (with some earlier authorship on the empirical intersections of narcissism and spirituality in The Handbook of Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder published by Wiley back in 2011), it seems to me that the APA leadership has effectively colluded with the collective psychosocial defenses of the GOP which, as I note here, arguably serves at the larger systemic level as the nation’s collective ego defense mechanism:
https://therapolitical.substack.com/p/system-self-preservation-the-gop?r=5pnyfp&utm_medium=ios