An International ‘Trump Contagion’ Effect

Attend ‘Ask Dr. Lee about Societal Mental Health’ at 1 p.m. EST Tomorrow!

Nearly six years ago, soon after Donald Trump entered the Oval Office, I organized a conference at Yale School of Medicine that brought together a distinguished group of psychiatrists to warn against the unprecedented dangers of a man with a dangerous psychology assuming presidential authority and influence.  This led to our New York Times bestselling book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. I and my colleagues determined that we had both a professional and a civic responsibility to share our special knowledge as a service to our nation.

Then, four years ago this month, in the main ballroom at the National Press Club in Washington DC, the World Mental Health Coalition and I held its most significant public event, “The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.”  It was important enough to be broadcast for the full three hours by C-Span.  In addition to psychiatrists, we brought together as never before leading scholars in history, political science, economics, journalism, social psychology, climate science, and nuclear science, as well as the former chief White House ethics lawyer of the Bush/Cheney Administration, the psychiatrist who established the department of psychological profiling in the CIA, and Rep. Jamie Raskin from the U.S. Congress.  We collectively warned that uncontained psychological dangers in the presidency would spread to social, cultural, geopolitical, and civic dangers.

Now in 2023, to a considerable extent because of the Trump presidency we tried our best to warn against, and what has ensued from it, our country and our world are in a much more dangerous situation than when we began.  Just as others have credited us of introducing the word, “danger”, to the discourse among political pundits, journalists, and other commentators, many are now crediting us for introducing the phrase, “Trump contagion”—which we have used since Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign (as well as “mental health pandemic,” “psychic contagion,” and “shared psychosis”).  Whether the topic is possible nuclear war, escalating climate disaster, rampant hunger and disease, the unraveling of the international order, or the expanding global mental health crisis, we can demonstrate that the “Trump contagion” has made it multifold worse.

Viewing the lack of accountability as success, furthermore, has spread the “contagion” not just in the United States but abroad: countries in Asia, the Middle East, South America, and even Canada and Europe have seen not only imitative mass shootings in the name of racism or sexism, but Fox News-like propaganda “news” programs and the election of Trump-like personalities in multiple countries.  Having spread beyond politics to include most visibly cable “Talk TV” and social media, the very nature of public discourse has changed.  Having dangerous and troubled personalities in national and international leadership positions has the effect of proliferating themselves: through imitators, surrogates, protégés, and novel institutional and media creations such as Newsmax and the “Tumpfied” CPAC organization.  The very fact that Jair Bolsonaro, who orchestrated an exact replica of Donald Trump’s January 6 attempted coup, will be a featured speaker at CPAC just hours before Trump gives the keynote address is illustrative of the cross-fertilization that occurs, as once did among Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini. And CPAC, now dubbed “TPAC”, has affiliates in Mexico, Brazil, Hungary, Australia, and Japan.

As I reflect back on these past six years, and also on the “Prescriptions for Survival” that we began three years ago this month, I keep asking myself what can be done to heal the nation and indeed the world from the destructive course that we are on.  The outcome is obvious: dangerous personalities in power will produce more dangers, creating harsh living conditions, fomenting hate and scapegoating to distract from their incompetence, and generating more dangerous, sociopathic personalities in society.  A societal mental health problem must have the participation of those who have studied human nature and behavior—that is mental health experts—who are accustomed to working to minimize human suffering, violence, and death.  We at the World Mental Health Coalition are not political persons.  Our advanced education and careers are in medicine and mental health.  Only the engagement of all our capacities in our multiple domains, sharing the best available knowledge, and employing our expertise will help us to reverse the ticking Doomsday Clock.

These are the reasons I now have my own publication here on Substack, since a full year ago, and I thank you for all your encouragement and support.

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee will be holding her second session of “Ask Dr. Lee about Societal Mental Health” tomorrow at 1 p.m. EST/10 a.m. PST on Zoom.  Please subscribe to receive further announcements one hour before the session.  Thank you!

Dr. Lee is a forensic psychiatrist, preventive psychiatrist, and expert on violence who has applied her mental health knowledge to advise criminal courts, civil courts, prisons, governments, and international bodies for 25 years.  Since 2017, she has endeavored to educate the American public on applying mental health principles to our current societal crises that are placing us at existential risk.