We Need to Recognize that the Problem is Psychiatric, Not Political

‘You’re Dealing with an Irrational Megalomaniac Psycho Totally Cornered’

We are in the most dangerous days of our lifetimes, days pregnant with an escalating World War and the very real possibility that a severely mentally-incapacitated American president, along with an equally dangerous Israeli prime minister, both cornered as never before, may escalate to nuclear weapons!

One of the nation’s most knowledgeable journalists, Chris Hedges, said: “Israel has at least 300 nuclear weapons. And Netanyahu is insane enough to use one.” Brilliant Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar explained:

it’s no wonder that the unthinkable is resurging here and there and everywhere, which would be to resort to tactical nuclear weapons or even a nuclear weapon,… because you’re dealing with an irrational megalomaniac psycho totally cornered.

This is the original reason why, from the very beginning in early 2017, the nation’s top psychiatrists came together at Yale School of Medicine, believing we had a professional and civic responsibility to warn immediately how dangerous it was going to be to have a person with Donald Trump’s severe mental problems empowered—including, most worrisome of all, control over the nation’s nuclear arsenals. That was why we rushed to print what quickly became a major national bestseller a few months later that year.

We further warned since 2017 that, unless he is contained, his actions would become more and more dangerously erratic and unstoppable—even to the point of setting the world on fire. Sure enough, here we are now!

When I comment on the need for fitness standards, impeachment, prosecution, and now mobilization of the international community, I am not doing so from a political perspective but a psychiatric one. These are the interventions needed to contain a psychiatric emergency—and to prevent collective suicide. A basic level of mental health must be present for all human affairs, and only afterward can we begin to consider politics. As long as that is absent, everything needs to be brought under psychiatric consultation and care (there are locked psychiatric hospitals, for example, where incapacitated individuals remain until capacity is restored, or until they are no longer a danger to society).

This is what former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly recognized when he was able to stop Donald Trump from waging nuclear war against North Korea. When he found that no political method worked with a dangerously mentally-impaired president, he immediately consulted our book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President—and used it like an “owner’s manual.” By employing psychiatric principles, he managed to turn, “fire and fury,” into “love letters”—and may have helped the globe escape nuclear annihilation!

While this was commendable and we may owe an ultimate debt to him, Kelly could have done more. When he consulted our book “secretly”, so as to keep “the office of the presidency” intact, he ended up protecting psychopathology, not the presidency. Only after the psychiatric emergency is contained, should he have proceeded onto political matters, such as the preservation of presidential decorum.

This is what former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly understood when he was able to stop Donald Trump from waging nuclear war against North Korea. When he found a dangerously mentally-impaired president, for whom no political method worked, he immediately consulted our book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President—and used it like an “owner’s manual.” By employing psychiatric principles, he managed to turn, “fire and fury,” into “love letters”—and may have helped the globe escape nuclear annihilation!

While this was commendable and we may owe an ultimate debt to him, Kelly could have done more. He should not have consulted our book “secretly”, so as to keep “the office of the presidency” intact. He ended up protecting psychopathology, not the presidency, and this did not serve the public. Only after the psychiatric emergency is contained, should he have proceeded onto political matters, such as the preservation of presidential decorum.

Some days ago, I wrote: “World, You Have the Chance to Save Us All: We Need Action, Not Impotent Words.” That article focused on the urgent need for a new, reinvigorated United Nations that would quickly rededicate and reenergize itself to keep with its original Charter: “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Currently, it has abrogated its raison d’être by choosing political expedience over any real intervention. I wrote what the international community should immediately do at this critical juncture in history, and will soon follow up with a more detailed plan.

For a psychiatrist, however, the “What to do” is less important than, “What do I see?” There is a reason Alcoholics Anonymous meetings begin with introductions like, “I am an alcoholic”—it is because identifying the problem is 90 percent of the solution. This is even more pronounced for psychiatric issues: prognosis depends on the ability to acknowledge the problem, called insight. The goal of therapy almost entirely revolves around developing insight, since what is usually lacking is not ability but awareness.

The same holds true for our country, and the global community. We have the ability to change, but do we know what the problem is? Can we acknowledge it, so as to mobilize the power we already hold? Once we resolve this question, solutions are a matter of course.

There is a reason Benjamin Netanyahu wanted so badly a mentally-feeble American president, whom he could use to wage a reckless war that no previous commander-in-chief would agree to. His need to dominate—first by vanquishing the Palestinian people, then vastly expanding Israeli territory, placing the entire region under its control, and exercising unlimited power with CIA/Pentagon backing—is goading us toward a global Holocaust!

Once we see what is truly happening—that so-called, “strongmen”, are in reality profoundly insecure individuals who resort to antisocial and destructive means, in a futile effort to meet their unmet emotional needs—we are far less likely to find them attractive or to elevate them to power. As of now, Netanyahu is the greatest threat to Israel, in the same manner that Trump is the greatest threat to the United States. If we saw how our very survival is at issue—and that no benefit comes from assisting pathology—we would be quicker to apply the appropriate cure.

Presently, there is the emergency situation of Donald Trump continuing to raise the stakes, as he faces multiple situations spinning out of control: Iran, Israel, the economy known as “affordability”, NATO, BRICS, Russia, China, the midterms, and Epstein, Epstein, Epstein…. What would be painful but tolerable for a healthy person is catastrophic for his limited emotional capacity, and he must be stopped before, in a fit of rage, he ignites the end of the world. Preventing this from happening, by any means, is the most urgent responsibility of us all.

An immediate way to start to restrain and control Donald Trump is to reject firmly his new 200-billion-dollar “supplementary” Pentagon funding legislation. He totally violated the Constitution by never even going to Congress, which has the sole power to declare war. Everyone in the responsible media, as well as all academics, journalists, and civic groups, need to join in insisting that Congress begin to place constraints on a belligerent president.

Another major opportunity that lies ahead for the people is the upcoming No Kings demonstration. This needs to be not just a repeat of the past but an impactful recognition of our urgent reality, capable of arousing the kind of creativity and compassion for ourselves, so as to confront our existential conundrum.

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is in the process of establishing SURVIVAL UNIVERSITY. Please use the contact form to join and to help make this unprecedented effort successful. She is also leading a public course series with Preventing Violence Now, about which you can find out more and register here. Our next class is Sunday, March 29, 2026 at 1:00 p.m. (exceptionally moved from Saturday to make way for No Kings day).

Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist, president of the World Mental Health Coalition, cofounder of Preventing Violence Now, and a long-term consultant to the World Health Organization and other United Nations bodies on scientific approaches to violence prevention. She became known to the public through her 2017 Yale conference and book that alerted against dangerous leadership. In 2019, she organized a major National Press Club Conference on the theme of, “The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” In 2024, she followed up with another major Conference, “The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” She published another book on dangerous leadership that has recently been expanded, in addition to a volume on how dangerous signs in a leader spreads and two critical statements on dangerous leadership. As many of the dangers she warned against unfolded—including millions of unnecessary pandemic deaths, the propagation of political violence, the exacerbation of economic inequality, the destruction of democracy, the devastation of the climate, the replacement of international collaboration with hostile confrontation, a renewed and accelerated nuclear arms race, a global emboldening of dictators leading to brutal warfare and genocide, and growing state-sanctioned cruelty and human rights violations—she has advocated for another way. Now, the author of the internationally-acclaimed textbook, Violence; over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters; 17 scholarly books and journal special issues; and over 300 opinion editorials, introduces her curriculum on rising above the current destructive course to embrace an awareness of, “One World or None.”