Oh, I like this article: “I am beginning to believe that a mental health hold . . . will become inevitable," Lee tells Salon in an interview https://www.salon.com/2019/12/27/pe...ntary-evaluation-yale-psychiatrist-bandy-lee/ A Yale psychiatrist who has repeatedly sounded the alarm about President Donald Trump’s mental health has cautioned that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is not doing enough to respond to the danger it poses. Bandy X. Lee, a professor of psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine who serves as president of the World Mental Health Organization, began warning about the dangers posed by the president’s mental health before his election. Lee then edited the book "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President" and convened a conference on the president’s mental health at Yale shortly after the president's inauguration. She was recently joined by psychiatrists across the country in calling for the Judiciary Committee to convene a panel of mental health experts to weigh in on the ongoing impeachment proceedings. Lee also “translates” some of Trump’s tweets on her own Twitter feed, which she described to Salon as a “public service.” Lee said she wants her “translations” to help readers see past Trump’s efforts to muddle reality with his “negative influence.” She recently “translated” Trump’s scorching six-page letter to Pelosi accusing her of trying to “steal the election” ahead of the House vote to impeach him in a Medium post. Arguing that the letter effectively serves as a “confession," Lee said that Trump’s letter was an example of the president projecting his own motives onto Pelosi. But Lee warned that Pelosi has not done enough to respond to the president. “As a coworker, she has the right to have him submit to an involuntary evaluation, but she has not,” Lee told Salon. "Anyone can call 911 to report someone who seems dangerous, and family members are the most typical ones to do so. But so can coworkers, and even passersby on the street. The law dictates who can determine right to treatment, or civil commitment, and in all 50 U.S. states this includes a psychiatrist. "The advantage of a coworker starting this process is that a court can mandate a mental capacity evaluation before the dangerous person returns to work," Lee continued. "The committing physician is preferably the patient's treater, but does not have to be." While Lee added that Pelosi’s strategy of withholding the articles of impeachment from the Senate has been effective, she also warned that the delay risks making Trump even more dangerous. “I am beginning to believe that a mental health hold, which we have tried to avoid, will become inevitable,” Lee said. In a recent interview with Salon, Lee discussed her “translation” of Trump's letter, Pelosi’s relationship with him and the growing dangers posed by the president’s mental health with Salon: What was your main takeaway when you first read Trump's six-page letter to Pelosi? First, he is highly unwell, which I am glad many finally seem to see now. More specifically, you can tell how unwell he is by the degree he cannot deviate from his defenses: mainly, denial and projection. We often say he is “doubling down.” A truly sick person will be unable to show any tolerance of ambiguity, doubt or flexibility in thinking. The letter, like his lengthy interviews or his chronic tweeting over years, is unable to show any variation from the characteristic rigidity of pathology. Denial is when you shut out of consciousness things that are too painful to consider, such as the fact that he is incapable of serving as president. He “knows” this better than anybody, which is why he has to push down the truth by saying: “I alone can fix it,” or “I know better than anybody.” Projection is when you displace undesirable traits of yourself you are trying to deny onto others. Most people will see that he is projecting his own unacceptable thoughts and motives onto Pelosi. Why go through the trouble of “translating” Trump’s lengthy letter? I started “translating” Trump’s tweets as a public service sometime in the summer, because I could see his negative influence as he tries to reform others’ thoughts. Even for those who do not believe him, he pushes the needle. The impressive inefficacy of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and then the impeachment proceedings in changing people’s minds should convince people of how powerful these mechanisms are. I intend my “translation” to neutralize some of his effects, as well as to “immunize” readers by arming them with the right interpretation. For example, they can now see that his severe symptoms make it right to decipher up as completely down and black as completely white. Without this, it is easy for people to get confused about what is reality, and all will become of equal validity without being testable, which is the purpose. If we read his letter correctly, on the other hand, it works as a confession. Psychoanalysts will recognize the method. It is a very standard way of coming to understand someone. First, you arrive at a “formulation” of the person from detectable, external patterns — and many clinicians say that they know more about Donald Trump than any patient they have ever had in their careers, as he is extremely transparent from his unfiltered tweets and from the overabundant, high-quality information that is available, including sworn testimonies. Once you have a formulation, you keep testing it until you reach a reasonable level of certainty. Then, you can interpret what one is saying in light of one’s defense mechanisms. And the more impaired the person is, the more predictable the thoughts and behavior will be. Some people will dispute the ethics of disclosing what I see, and my response is: danger. We are legally bound to break patient confidentiality for safety reasons, and a president is not even a patient. What was Trump trying to tell Pelosi with the letter? He was not telling her anything so much as telling himself and his “base." He senses better than anyone that she sees through his façade and knows he is incapable — his biggest fear. And so he will wish to avoid her just as he does other healthy world leaders. He prefers to associate with his “kind": those who are too deprived to notice, the uneducated, other incapable “leaders” such as dictators and those who successfully manipulate him. You mention “shared psychosis” while “translating” the portion of Trump’s letter about law professor Jonathan Turley, who argued against impeachment. Are you implying that he suffers from shared psychosis? And can you elaborate on your “shared psychosis” description in general? “Shared psychosis” is a phenomenon which happens in households or in nations when a sick person goes untreated and healthy members are in close contact. Rather than the sick person getting better, the otherwise healthy people take on symptoms of the sick person, as if they had the sickness themselves. It is a very dramatic phenomenon that equally dramatically disappears when you remove the sick person from contact or media exposure. The severity by which others are affected is what induces me to believe that Trump is sometimes truly paranoid and delusional rather than merely lying. The difference is a matter of degree, and I have enough experience with this dynamic in prison settings to recognize that this is at pathological levels. In this context, almost anyone who actively takes the side of the president is likely to have some degree of the “shared psychosis.” If you were unaffected, you would be repelled. And this is why we often see a clear split, much like the binary division in our country. Pelosi called the letter “really sick.” What did you make of her reaction? She has said this a number of times, but I am not sure she is convinced of her own words. If she were, shouldn’t she be responding to it as an emergency? As a coworker, she has the right to have him submit to an involuntary evaluation, but she has not. There is also the common mistake to think that mental impairment and criminality are mutually exclusive, when they have nothing to do with each other, but happening in the same person can cause much greater danger. Trump is reportedly angry that Pelosi is not sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate, where he believes he will be acquitted. How do you think the president will respond if she continues to delay the trial? We have created one of the most dangerous periods by first delaying impeachment and allowing his false sense of impunity to swell and then proceeding. Impeachment is much needed as “limit setting,” and the House speaker has done well to set limits on the Senate by delaying the articles. But we simply cannot ignore the dangers. I am beginning to believe that a mental health hold, which we have tried to avoid, will become inevitable.
ok this sounds really crazy now haha. Dems can win easily in 2020 if they 1) spend it campaigning with 2) a good candidate and 3) stop pushing all of these "interesting" ideas. so far 0 for 3...
I didn't think this was a Dem thing. I thought it was a mental health thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandy_X._Lee
yeah but to be objective it seems a little off to diagnose someone simply from watching their video clips on TV as a medical professional. Trump is a reality TV star appearing in the biggest reality TV show and is always looking for shock value and chants from the masses. I think he is fucked in the head but not sure I would make a professional medical diagnosis. I am sure Trump.wakes up daily thinking up what crazy shit he can spew next because he cares more about Twitter followers and rally chants than actually.doing the job.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... And this duck is at the helm of the planet's superpower! How many times have you heard untrained, conservative talking heads refer to mental health issues when a (white) guy kills people? (They tend to have a different view if someone of color does anything similar.) But you won't afford trained professionals, with their credentials and reputations on the line, to even sound a warning? Have you read the wiki page? Apart from her impressive credentials and experience, here: In April 2017 Lee hosted a meeting at Yale University medical school to discuss the mental health of President Donald Trump.[5][6] In an interview with Salon in May 2017 she argued that the subject of the President's mental health amounted to a "state of emergency" as "our survival as a species may be at stake."[7] She also discussed her political views, linking what she sees as increasing inequality in the United States to a deterioration in collective mental health.[7] Later in 2017 she was the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book of essays that examined Trump's mental health[8] and resulted in her receiving thousands of threatening messages by letter, phone and on social media that included death threats.[2] In December 2017 she met 12 members of the United States Congress (11 Democrats, 1 Republican) to give them her opinion on the mental health of Donald Trump in which she reportedly argued that he was "unraveling".[2] Lee's book and her presentation to members of Congress has contributed to the debate about whether the Goldwater rule, the informal name given to the rule of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) that it is unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional opinion about public figures they have not examined, still holds and its precise interpretation.[2][9][10] In a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, Jeffrey Lieberman, past president of the APA, argued that while he accepted that Lee and her co-authors were acting in good faith and out of a sense of moral obligation, they were guilty of a "misguided and dangerous morality".[11] Lieberman himself, however, was later reported to have diagnosed Trump, the very act he accused Lee and colleagues of committing.[12] According to the APA Code of Ethics (Section 7.1), coming before the Goldwater rule, "Psychiatrists are encouraged to serve society by advising and consulting with the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of the government."[13] Lee and colleagues maintain that it is especially important to abide by professional norms and standards during politically charged times, and that it is dangerous to turn reasonable ethical guidelines such as the Goldwater rule into a gag rule.[14] Lee stated in an interview, "whenever the Goldwater rule is mentioned, we should also refer to the Declaration of Geneva, established by the World Medical Association 25 years earlier, which mandates physicians to speak up if there are humanitarian reasons to do so. This Declaration was created in response to the experience of Nazism."[15]