Last Thursday, a group of psychiatrists at Yale University held a town hall meeting to discuss their "duty to warn" publicly about unfit sociopath Donald "Rump" Trump's mental state. What made the town hall meeting extraordinary was the willingness of trained psychiatrists to openly discuss what they believe to be Rump's mental illness, breaking from a decades-long tradition (known as the "Goldwater Rule") of psychiatrists refraining from diagnosing public officials who have not been examined by them in person. Underlying the psychiatrists' decision to discuss Rump's psychological unfitness is the concept of a "duty to warn", meaning a responsibility of a psychiatrist to break confidentiality and warn authorities if a patient is dangerous to himself or the community.
Some excerpts from the article:
“The Hippocratic oath to First Do No Harm — sworn to Apollo the physician — has been turned into a self-serving hypocritical oath, charges Dr. John Gartner, a former assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School. 'The American Psychiatric Association looks out for the welfare of its members, to protect them from lawsuits. They’re not worrying about whether 300 million Americans are vulnerable to the life-and-death actions taken by this abnormal president.' And he and an increasing number of his colleagues are ready to declare that President Trump, whose actions are often described with neutral terms like 'unprecedented,' is in fact mentally ill." -- (emphasis added)
"Dr. James F. Gilligan, a senior clinical professor of psychiatry at NYU Medical School, was on next, and offered that Trump’s mental unfitness had multiple causes. And before the meeting was over, the following diagnoses had been brought up: narcissism combined with a sociopathic personality, pathological lying, and paranoia, which makes him vulnerable to conspiracy theories. Anyone who doesn’t flatter him extravagantly is meant to be destroyed. He engages in exploitation and violation of the rights of others, and sometimes goes as far as sadism, with no evidence of remorse." (emphasis added)Take time to read the whole article. The mental health issues of former President Richard Nixon's alcoholic instability as he neared impeachment and former President Ronald Reagan's creeping dementia were raised largely after they left office. Now, we have a sitting (un)President who is being identified openly by mental health professionals as mentally ill. And we're less than 100 days into his term.
