The Abyss Ahead

How We Got Here ... and What Now?

“We are headed to the abyss. and we don’t seem to have anybody figuring out how to pull us out.”

This dire “abyss” warning came from an unexpected source: Chuck Todd of “Meet the Press,” on August 6, 2023.

Substantially contributing to this situation is what I have termed “the More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” which we cannot ignore.  This is, in fact, the tentative title of a new book I am writing, for which I am in need of a good publisher, or perhaps a foundation or benefactor support, if anyone reading this can help.

The months leading up to the 2024 election may well be the most difficult, dangerous, violent, and consequential in our history.  The fateful decisions ahead are now literally of national and maybe even of civilizational consequence.  Indeed, even as we grapple with the fate of the United States, the fate of our entire world is hanging on the balance.

The risks of potentially escalating worldwide catastrophic conflict—simultaneously in Europe, in the Middle East, and in the Pacific—have never been greater with the weapons of total destruction that are now available.  Additionally, climatic destruction is already upon us, fast escalating past the so-called irreversible “tipping point”: already, this year’s global temperatures on both land and sea have never been higher in all human history, astonishing even scientists.  This is why I have previously forewarned that the Doomsday Clock is now ticking faster and louder, for multiple reasons.

There were reasons for my efforts revolving especially around the unprecedented dangers resulting from one severely mentally-disturbed and uniquely unfit former president, Donald Trump.  But now, even if this singular person were to depart the scene for one reason or another, what I have been terming, “Trump Contagion” and “Death Spiral,” have already spread far beyond their originating point.

In the weeks and months ahead, our focus will be more on the future.  But for now, it may be useful to consider why we mental health experts have been desperately warning over and over about what we fully foresaw.  This is the backdrop behind how we have arrived at the present, in such a dire “abyss”.  Unless we learn from the past, we will not escape the same mistakes in the future; even today, we could make our lives much easier by applying the lessons of our experience, including our errors.  Hence, I here summarize my own involvements along with those of the organization I founded, the World Mental Health Coalition.

When Donald Trump became U.S. president in 2017, I immediately convened with my colleagues to organize an emergency conference at Yale School of Medicine.  At that conference were some of the nation’s most distinguished psychiatrists, raising unprecedented warnings about the new president, and explaining in detail why they believed they were ethically obligated to do so.  That conference led to a major publisher contacting me, so that I was quickly able to put together what a few months later became an instant New York Times bestseller and, according to the Washington Post, “the most daring book of 2017”: The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

As a result, through 2018 there were many invitations from the most prominent network and cable programs, raising our concerns to “the number one topic of national discussion.”  Senior journalists got in touch with us to congratulate us on our “having arrived,” and chairs of psychiatry from around the country commended us, believing that a solution was finally imminent.

Then, to the great surprise of many in the psychiatric field itself, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) denounced us as “unethical” and practicing “armchair psychiatry.”  Anyone in psychiatry should have been able to distinguish between making a diagnosis—which “the Goldwater rule” discourages (not prohibits!)—and warning against a person’s dangerousness—which is actually one of our primary societal duties.  Nonetheless, the APA’s disinformation stuck for a poorly-informed public, and the trade association was subsequently richly rewarded for misleading the people.

We now know that the APA pursued this defamatory course against conscientious professionals essentially on behalf of then-President Donald Trump, as the driver behind the APA’s actions demonstrated.  By demonstrating its willingness to bend science for the benefit of power, the APA received unprecedented federal funds and pharmaceutical-industry support, so as to open a swanky new office building and museum in the middle of Washington, DC, near Capitol Hill.

Those of us who had other concerns were in the process of consulting with over fifty U.S. Congress members, who were counting on us to “educate the public medically,” so that they could “act politically,” with the Twenty-Fifth Amendment foremost on their minds.  In fact, the drafter of the Amendment himself repeated that he meant medical data to come first, and the vice president to come last in the process—“pressured” by the medical facts of the situation.  All this the APA interrupted, not to mention our proper response to two impeachments, a disastrous Covid response, and a violent insurrection that continues to imperil democracy.

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, at the time, proposed to put out a public notice to the APA, stating that Congress members wished to hear from mental health experts and not to interfere.  Unfortunately, we at the time declined his offer, believing that it would be embarrassing for the psychiatric profession and falsely trusting that the APA could not be so rogue as to go against its own ethical guideline, which comes even before “the Goldwater rule”:

“Psychiatrists should foster the cooperation of those legitimately concerned with the medical, psychological, social, and legal aspects of mental health and illness. Psychiatrists are encouraged to serve society by advising and consulting with the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of the government” (Section 7.1).

We did not yet fully know the compromised character of those driving the contemporary APA.

And just last year, we learned that the White House Chief of Staff himself, Four-Star General John Kelly, had “secretly” bought our book soon after publication and was using it as a kind of “owner’s manual” to try to control and restrain the president whom he also recognized to be seriously mentally troubled and very dangerous….

(To be continued.)