Is Mr. Trump Nuts? -
- 6 years ago
Is Mr. Trump Nuts? -
In “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” released last October, more than two dozen contributors, most mental-health professionals, concluded
that Mr. Trump presents a grave and immediate danger to the safety of America and the world.
In the future, it would be a good idea if presidential candidates voluntarily submitted to a mental-health evaluation, just as they often do a physical one — and in
that case, psychiatrists would have a critical role to play.
Understandable because Mr. Trump’s behavior in office — impulsive, erratic, dishonest, childish, crude — is so alarming,
and so far from what Americans expect in their chief executive, that it cries out for a deeper explanation.
It’s obvious to anyone who listens to him speak, reads his tweets
and sees the effects of his behavior — on the presidency, on the nation and its most important institutions, and on the integrity of the global order.
There’s a good reason the profession established an ethical guideline in 1973, known as the Goldwater Rule,
that prohibits psychiatrists from offering professional judgment on public figures they have not personally examined.
It’s beside the point not because a president’s mental capacity doesn’t matter, nor
because we should blindly accept our leaders’ declarations of their own stability, let alone genius.
Rather, we don’t need a medical degree or a psychiatric diagnosis to tell us what is wrong with Mr. Trump.
In “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” released last October, more than two dozen contributors, most mental-health professionals, concluded
that Mr. Trump presents a grave and immediate danger to the safety of America and the world.
In the future, it would be a good idea if presidential candidates voluntarily submitted to a mental-health evaluation, just as they often do a physical one — and in
that case, psychiatrists would have a critical role to play.
Understandable because Mr. Trump’s behavior in office — impulsive, erratic, dishonest, childish, crude — is so alarming,
and so far from what Americans expect in their chief executive, that it cries out for a deeper explanation.
It’s obvious to anyone who listens to him speak, reads his tweets
and sees the effects of his behavior — on the presidency, on the nation and its most important institutions, and on the integrity of the global order.
There’s a good reason the profession established an ethical guideline in 1973, known as the Goldwater Rule,
that prohibits psychiatrists from offering professional judgment on public figures they have not personally examined.
It’s beside the point not because a president’s mental capacity doesn’t matter, nor
because we should blindly accept our leaders’ declarations of their own stability, let alone genius.
Rather, we don’t need a medical degree or a psychiatric diagnosis to tell us what is wrong with Mr. Trump.