The New York Times Puts Our Words on the Front Page!

The Times and the American Psychiatric Association Owe Us and the Public an Apology

More than six years after publishing its own editorial that eventually blacked out mental health experts from the media entirely; gave credibility to the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA’s) public gaslighting; and arguably caused my loss of my professorship at Yale—which had its intended chilling effect—the New York Times is publishing our exact words on its front page:

“I do think we need full-blown neuropsychological exams” for both candidates, said Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.

A “neuropsychiatric examination” is exactly what my renowned colleagues and collaborators, Drs. Judith Herman, Nanette Gartrell, and Dee Mosbacher stated Donald Trump needed, since 2016.

“You’ve got to take an exam to drive,” Dr. Tanzi said.  “These guys are taking the exam to be in the White House, where you have buttons you can push that might end the world.”

This was my primary concern and reason for organizing my conference at Yale School of Medicine, with Drs. Judith Herman, Robert Jay Lifton, and James Gilligan. This led to our unprecedented New York Times bestseller of its kind, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

Americans are left to judge their fitness for office in what experts on aging say is the worst possible way: from afar, largely based on snippets of their public appearances.

The APA misled the public into believing that no information was better than the sharing of expert knowledge—so that the public must fend for itself, doing from afar what the APA claimed that not even experts could do from afar (calling us “armchair” psychiatrists). Yet, dangerousness is different from diagnosis and best done “from afar,” through collateral reports and objective observations rather than just taking the dangerous person for his word.

Dr. Sayed Azizi, the clinical chief of behavioral neurology and memory disorders at Yale University, said exams that go well beyond [the simple questions of a 10-minute screen] are common in some fields after a certain age.

We have noted that increasingly doctors and lawyers, in addition to chief executive officers, are required to undergo mental fitness testing, because of advancing age of practice.  That said, dementia is one of the least concerning conditions that compromise fitness, not least because of the plainness of impairments that even laypersons can recognize.

Dr. Tanzi said [cognitive] tests should be administered to any presidential candidate 50 years or older, by doctors who do not have any political or personal allegiance to them.  “It has to be an independent assessment,” he said.  “That’s absolutely essential.”

The absolute importance of independent assessments is what we emphasized, when White House-employed, subordinate to the commander-in-chief, and political office-vying Ronny Jackson flaunted his 10-minute screen to declare the former president “mentally fit,” when Jackson was never even formally trained to perform mental fitness tests.

In 2018, [based on] the Montreal Cognitive Assessment,… Dr. Ronny Jackson, then the White House physician, concluded that “the president is mentally … very intact.”  Mr. Trump went on TV to boast about his results.

Donald Trump boasted about his results, repeatedly, in no ordinary ways—as we expect unfit persons to do—of the simple screen supposedly proving him to be a “genius”.  The screen only showed that he did not have nursing home-level dementia (it is too insensitive even to rule out dementia, since patients diagnosed of dementia have scored perfectly).

Fred Trump, the former president’s father, developed Alzheimer’s in his mid-80’s.  Those who study the disease say Mr. Trump’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s, already higher because of his age, increases by about 30 percent because of his father’s diagnosis.

These are the exact risk factors we pointed out since the very beginning, in addition to actual symptoms of cognitive impairment, as arguments for an emergency mental fitness exam.  Our calls went unheeded, until we actually performed a high-caliber, full mental fitness test as a public service, when the appropriate data became available—only to find that Donald Trump is not only unfit for the presidency, but for any job.

“There is a public need to know about the physical and mental fitness of anybody who’s going to go into the highest office in the country,” said Dr. Joe Verghese, a professor of neurology and medicine … at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.  “You want to be reassured that steps have been taken to ensure that the person you’re electing into office will have the … capability.”

Instead, Donald Trump’s severe mental impairments and delusional beliefs have spread unmitigated, with the public left undefended and uninformed.  Joe Biden’s speech impediment and normal aging have been amplified as “cognitive problems,” as a result of Trump’s need to project (attribute to others one’s own symptoms as a form of denial).  Trump’s compulsive drive to overcompensate for his weaknesses, on the other hand, has been mistaken for “strength” (as he overwhelmingly pressures others to believe).

The New York Times titled its article: “What are We Told about the Health of Biden and Trump?  They Decide.”  Yet, what are psychiatrists allowed to say about our own area of expertise? The newspaper decided, censoring my words—having deleted my quotes from more than a dozen articles before publication, blindsiding even Peter Baker—and blocking the publication of multiple opinion articles that the then-opinion editor, Jim Dao, had already accepted.  The societal effects, as we warned, have been catastrophic.

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee will be holding a live session of “Do We Need an Emergency Committee?” on Sunday, April 7, 2024, at 1 p.m. EDT/10 a.m. PDT on Zoom.  Please subscribe to receive further announcements one hour before the session.

Dr. Lee is a forensic psychiatrist, social psychiatrist, and expert on violence who, since 2017, has endeavored to warn the American public of the societal dangers that would result from someone so mentally-impaired as Donald Trump being given the powers of the U.S. presidency. As he may be granted those powers again, we are now facing a moment of existential threat to American democracy and to humankind. As many know, Dr. Lee has always believed mental health experts’ voice to be central, which was the reason for its suppression in a time of authoritarianism. Now, exactly seven months before the presidential election, as our nation continues to struggle with trying to deal with a mental health crisis without mental health expertise, we will explore the ways in which we can contribute.