Top Psychiatrists Gather to Warn That Donald Trump 'Represents a Danger to Public Health'

Scott Olson/Getty Images
Diane Herbst May 01, 2018 04:42 PM

President Donald Trump has called himself a “very stable genius” — but a group of esteemed mental health professions apparently don’t agree.

A group of psychiatrists and psychologists gathered Tuesday for a panel discussion titled “The Increasingly Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” and argued that President Trump’s “mental instability,” pattern of violence-inciting rhetoric and multiple lies are “dangerous” — and have already caused unprecedented anxiety and stress across the nation.

One of the doctors, from Yale, says she has even had private meetings with concerned members of Congress to talk about Trump’s mental instability.

“It is our consensus view that Mr. Trump in the office of the presidency is a danger to the nation and the world,” Dr. Bandy Lee, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, said during the discussion at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Lee and other panelists stressed that they are non-partisan, and feel a duty to tell the public about their observations — while they refrain from providing any official diagnosis. Last October, Lee also published a book titled The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

Trump “has repeatedly shown evidence of how dangerous he is” because of his ability to stimulate violence,” Dr. Jim Gilligan, professor of clinical psychiatry at New York University’s school of medicine, said Tuesday.

Trump’s encouragement of attendees at his campaign rallies to punch protesters, his defense of white nationalists in Charlottesville last year, and suggestion that if opponent Hillary Clinton won the election, his followers could assassinate her are some examples, he says.

“Our responsibility here as psychiatrists,” Gilligan says, “is to warn the public when we have reason to believe, based on our research with the most dangerous people in society, that a public figure by virtue of the actions he takes represents a danger to public health.”

http://people.com/politics/psychiatr...public-health/