Health v. Disease

We Need to Stop Making It a Partisan Issue

What is often taken for granted with mental health is the joy, peace, and exuberance we naturally feel.  Even when we stew over problems, we do so because we are able to, so that we can face reality for what it is and resolve any problems.  I have emphasized before that the Democratic Party’s ability to be flexible, resilient, and resourceful enough to shift gears, when the situation calls for it, is a sign of health.  The transition is difficult, but we reap the rewards for having faced up to the challenge.

This is what we are enjoying right now at the Democratic National Convention, where joy, peace, and exuberance prevail.  What is unknown to many is that this is because, above all, we have a candidate who has not been tainted by years of projection, distortion, manipulation, and reshaping of reality that mental pathology entails.  In other words, this is what sanity feels like!

Joe Biden himself would have retained a more balanced image, had he had a healthier opponent.  We would have maintained a much more reality-based view of Hillary Clinton: who wound up being the one needing to be “locked up”?  Many would also not have developed fantastical beliefs about Donald Trump, to the point of blinding their eyes and closing their ears about him.

This gives us the occasion to consider what a different world we would be living in, had mental health experts not been silenced during a critical time of need.  Distinguishing between health and disease, encouraging paths that restore health, constant reality testing even when uncomfortable, and protecting ourselves from the insidious encroaches of mental pathology—which spreads through seduction and oppression of the mind—are all part and parcel of our work.  “Unsolvable” psychological conundrums for the average person are the very reason mental health professionals exist, and what they specialize in managing and treating.

When we first came forward at the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency, it was the public itself that embraced us with open arms!  The nation recognized a need for mental health expertise, catapulted our book into an unprecedented bestseller of its kind, and made us the number one topic of national conversation within three months of publication.  Since our goal was not political but medical—in truth to support life and to prevent death—we believed we brought a much-needed, neutral perspective in a time of political polarities.  We did not have any illusions about what we were dealing with, and thus the public’s immediate acceptance of us, and calling upon us, was a life-affirming act.  This is also why we spoke up so urgently, calling the Trump problem a “public health issue” and emphasizing the need for prevention—and why we gave the most urgent alert when the American Psychiatric Association (APA) moved to shut us down, for reasons that made no sense from a medical or ethical point of view.

Even after the APA, together with the New York Times, removed us from the public sphere, messages continued to pour into our web site: “Where are the psychiatrists?  Where are the psychologists?”

From our point of view, the long suffering of our nation was unnecessary.  The emergence of a “MAGA cult” was not automatic but predicated on the continued normalization of Donald Trump and his exposure to the public—hence spreading “Trump Contagion.”  Trump himself knew that his fortunes depended on his ability to manipulate crowds for his “Big Lie,” a third presidential bid, and his way out of prison—all of which he would not have dared, had he been contained early on.

Now, having been unfettered for so long and allowed to balloon in expectations, Donald Trump himself has become acutely more dangerous.  Now, with his third presidential campaign suddenly flailing, and—unlike Biden, Harris, or Walz—unable to adapt to new situations, he is bound to lash out and respond in maximally destructive ways.  These are the things about which we must be vigilant and have realistic expectations.

This is why giving power to unfit persons can be dangerous.  Knowing deep down that they are undeserving of it, they will deny, demand, abuse, exploit, and destroy—anything but admit that this power does not belong to them.  Now, not only has the house of cards Donald Trump built begun to crumble, the false image he was barely holding together for himself is disintegrating.  Hence, we are about to enter the most dangerous period ever, in addition to the dangers we already face from nefarious actors investing everything in his election, and the already unstable global situation from his upending of the World Order.

Kamala Harris has fair footing as a former prosecutor, just as my experience as a forensic psychiatrist working in criminal justice settings has helped me in understanding a criminal personality.  The challenge over time, however, will be whether she will indeed confront what she is dealing with, and not to place it all on the shoulders of lay voters.  Clinton thought she had an easy victory, and Biden believed he could simply focus on policy and the rhetoric of “reconciliation”: both had underestimated the power of mental pathology.

This is why we are committed to doing what we can to educate the public through a major National Press Club event, at a critical time before the election—which you can help make possible!

Announcement: This week and next week, I will be holding our weekly sessions on, “Recovering from Trump Contagion – Restoring Our Collective Mental Health,” on Saturdays, not Fridays, at 1 p.m. EDT/10 a.m. PDT.  After these two weeks, we will return to Fridays at 12 noon EDT/9 a.m. PDT.  I have been invited to speak at an International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) Seminar, for which a preview of the material is here.  Another major announcement: Thanks to your demands—and superlative compliments!—not to mention almost 800,000 views in less than twenty-four hours, Anthony Davis and the Weekend Show have invited me back to be a weekly guest!   I will be returning every Sunday evening until the dangers of Donald Trump are contained….  Finally, we will have a weekly platform to explain through a mental health lens the moment-to-moment puzzling occurrences that truly should be daily front-page news!  Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s electrifying speech the other night says it all: “It’s spreading all across this country we love.  A familiar feeling that’s been buried too deep for far too long.  You know what I’m talking about…. the contagious power of hope, the anticipation, the energy, the exhilaration of once again being on the cusp of a brighter day”—which is what I call, health.  We are finally ready for health by properly addressing and confronting the issue that has been oppressing us for too long, through what she called, “the demons of fear, division, and hate.”