The following article by Gail Sheehy was posted on the Daily Beast website October 2, 2017:
The Goldwater Rule has long held that mental-health professionals shouldn’t diagnose from a distance. But these experts decided to speak up before it’s too late.
The president attacks the mayor of San Juan after a devastating hurricane as the death toll rises. In his maiden UN speech, he threatens North Korea with “total destruction.” His tweetstorms show a narcissistic mind obsessed with cutting down critics and igniting culture wars while ignoring the responsibilities of his office. No wonder a new poll shows that a stunning 56 percent of Americans believe Donald Trump is “not fit” to serve as president.
But while much of America has begun speaking openly about the mental state of their president, the actual professionals in the field of psychiatry are prohibited from doing so because of the gag rule imposed by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
Until now. Twenty-seven eminent psychiatrists and psychologists—including professors from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford—have rebelled against the so-called Goldwater rule in favor of what they see as their own ethical “duty to warn” the public of the perils of being led by a president who will feed his “malignant narcissism” at any cost.
Their essays are collected in a powerful new book called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, which hits bookstores on Oct 2. They warn that the Trump effect has created a “malignant normalcy,” a collective psychological anesthesia. It’s the kind of hush that falls before an impending hurricane or an October surprise. As comforting as this lull may feel, evidence mounts that the worst is coming.
This is not a bleached academic text. It is a kaleidoscope of vivid observations of a baffling personality. These expert observers of behavior argue that this president provides them with a vast treasure of public performances, videos, and twittered screeds on which to base their assessments of his mental state. It is not a diagnosis, but an effort to educate the public on behaviors that are well-documented as dangerous and pathological, not only by psychology but by many historical accounts of the rise of dictators.
The psychiatrists argue that objectively observable evidence of mental impairment is no different from physical infirmity, as far as meeting the intentions of the 25th amendment. They have sent their statement of alarm about President Trump’s mental stability to every senator and House member, urging they act to form an independent expert panel to evaluate the president. Simultaneously, 27 representatives, all Democrats, have co-sponsored a bill to establish a “commission on presidential capacity,” including four psychiatrists, which would give Congress the authority to declare a president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
View the post here.