Has coup planning reached a new phase? Lawmakers concerned about President Donald Trump’s mental state summoned Yale University psychiatry professor Dr. Bandy X. Lee to Capitol Hill last month for two days of briefings about his recent behavior, reports Politico.
In private meetings with more than a dozen members of Congress held on Dec. 5 and 6, Lee briefed lawmakers — all Democrats except for one Republican senator, whom Lee declined to identify. Her professional warning to Capitol Hill: “He’s going to unravel, and we are seeing the signs.”
In an interview, she pointed to Trump “going back to conspiracy theories, denying things he has admitted before, his being drawn to violent videos.” Lee also warned, “We feel that the rush of tweeting is an indication of his falling apart under stress. Trump is going to get worse and will become uncontainable with the pressures of the presidency.”
Lee is a forensic psychiatrist on the faculty of Yale School of Medicine and the author of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.
She has recommended:
- Under Section 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Congress should immediately constitute an independent, nonpartisan panel of mental health and medical experts to evaluate Mr. Trump’s capability to fulfill the responsibilities of the presidency.
- The panel should consist of three neuropsychiatrists (one clinical, one academic, and one military), one clinical psychologist, one neurologist, and two internists.
- Panel members should be nominated by the nonpartisan, nongovernmental National Academy of Medicine.
- The experts should serve six-year terms, with a provision that one member per year will rotate off and be replaced.
- Congress should enact legislation to authorize this panel to perform comprehensive mental health and medical evaluations of the president and vice-president on an annual basis. This legislation should require the panel to evaluate all future presidential and vice-presidential candidates. The panel should also be empowered to conduct emergency evaluations should there be an acute change in the mental or physical health of the president or vice-president.
- The evaluations should be strictly confidential unless the panel determines that the mental health or medical condition of the president or vice-president renders her/him incapable of fulfilling the duties of office.
-RW
Brandy Lee needs to be reprimand by the APA.
ReplyDeleteSusan McDaniel, the president of the APA wrote in an letter to the editor March 7, 2016 in the New York Times- “Our ethical code states that psychologists should not offer a diagnosis in the media of a living public figure they have not examined”
Well if Congress is going to establish a panel to study the mental fitness of the president, it should not be limited to the Executive Branch. Let's evaluate the mental fitness of all members of all members of Congress, the Judiciary, and the bureaucracy.
ReplyDeleteAmen!
DeleteI wouldn't be so hasty with such an endorsement. Effectively, it would be replacing a collection of oligarchic sociopaths with a licensed, protected, unaccountable guild of priestly, political king-makers and jurist and legislator certifiers. The reach and intrusiveness of such a corrupt priesthood would not stop at the bounds of politics and politicians. Better the devils we know, than politicizing medicine, much less psychology, even further than it already is politicized.
DeleteNote the implicit assumption that it is not "the responsibilities of the presidency" which are insane but, rather, the office-holder.
ReplyDeleteDavid Palmer on 24 like a boss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh1WZVX3SHU
ReplyDelete