Yesterday’s epic press conference didn’t do much to quiet the chorus of mental health professionals
questioning the President’s mental state.
It’s a break with the field’s tradition,
and it may say less about Trump than it says about the doctors themselves.
— John Gartner is a Baltimore psychologist and former Johns Hopkins University professor.
He recently diagnosed Donald Trump with a serious personality disorder,
and even started a petition, now with over 23,000 signatures, to have him removed from office.
— What’s wrong with Donald Trump?
— The short answer is that he is dangerously mentally ill.
He meets criteria for three severe personality disorders. It’s a toxic triad called malignant narcissism.
— Thank you.
— But here’s the thing: Gartner has never personally treated Trump.
And neither have other doctors who have spoken out.
Both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association
told VICE News that it’s definitely unethical to diagnose living people who doctors have not personally treated,
no matter how serious their concern.
Even Donald Trump.
— The duty to warn trumps all other ethical considerations.
And so, I think that, actually, it would be unethical and immoral for me not to speak out.
— This isn’t the first time a politician has been called out.
in 1964, Lyndon Johnson suggested his opponent, Barry Goldwater,
was too unstable to be trusted with the nuclear codes,
which he made clear in this ad, considered the most controversial attack ad in American politics.
— Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd.
The stakes are too high for you to stay home.
— About a thousand psychiatrists also publicly questioned Goldwater’s mental health,
and this embarrassed the American Psychiatric Association so much that it formalized a new rule,
calling it, the “Goldwater rule.”
It declared it unethical to offer professional opinion without conducting an examination.
— Hello, everybody. Everything good?
— Regarding Trump, mental health professionals told us they’d never seen so many of their colleagues
speaking out about a President at once, violating the rule or coming close to it.
— Do you think the Goldwater rule exists to keep people from making political commentary
under the guise of a professional opinion?
— Absolutely.
The problem is that we never really can isolate the personal and the professional.
So what the rule says is that we have to keep in mind our separate roles,
as professional psychiatrists and as citizens in a society, but there’s no way really to do that.
— Psychiatrist Claire Pouncey co-authored a paper critical of the Goldwater rule around the same time
that Trump won the Republican nomination.
She argues that upholding the Goldwater rule can itself be unethical,
because it inhibits potentially valuable educational efforts and psychiatric opinions
about potentially dangerous public figures.
— So, like, a month ago I said, “Drain the swamp!” Place went crazy—I said, “Woah!”
Then I said it again. Then I starting saying it like I meant it. Right?
— Being the President is partly a performance, perhaps more so for Trump than any other President.
— Let’s drain the swamp. I mean, it’s true.
—The Goldwater rule exists in part to keep professionals from making claims based off of soundbytes.
— One part of the Goldwater rule is the idea that someone might be presenting a public persona,
and their private selves are different.
— I don’t make such a big distinction.
I don’t find that argument very compelling, because it isn’t what matters.
It's the public behaviors that matter.
We can draw meaningful and valuable conclusions based on what we see right before us,
without any special professional expertise.
— Gartner doesn’t think his petition will actually remove the President from office,
but he still feels compelled to cross the Goldwater line.
— So you’re obviously a really politically engaged guy, you read a lot of news.
Is it possible that you’re just reading political news and then bringing in
the professional tools you have? Like, if you’re a hammer, all you see is a nail.
— Well, you mean, am I just a partisan and I’m just sort-of… pathologizing?
— Yeah, anyone who doesn’t agree with you is crazy.
— Right.
You know, I would fall on my knees and kiss President Pence’s feet.
There’s nothing about President Pence’s beliefs that I don’t disagree with, but he's not insane.