Zoom Link—‘How do We Recover Our Democracy? Democracy as a Sign of Collective Mental Health’

Live Session Today at 12 noon EDT / 9 a.m. PDT

I reproduce here an excerpt of an excellent blog post about us by Dr. Steven Hassan, who will be speaking at our major conference:

The November 2024 election will determine the future of America and the free world. Conservative attorney George Conway has created the Anti-Psychopath PAC and has publicly called out the media’s failure to explain the dangers of having a psychopath in the White House. One of the leading experts who has been trying to say this for years but has been silenced is Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div., a forensic psychiatrist, president of the World Mental Health Coalition, and an internationally recognized expert on violence. A brilliant and compassionate observer of the political landscape, she is the author of Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul and editor of the best-selling book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. She is assembling a team of authors to create a new, short book published by the World Mental Health Coalition and tentatively titled The More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew. 

Donald Trump has chosen J.D. Vance as his vice president, and the pair continue to get increasingly “weird,” and lying seems to be ramping up, if that is even possible. Unfortunately, the media has been largely silenced by citing the American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater Rule.” The public has a right to hear from forensic and other mental health experts such as Bandy X. Lee who believe they had “a duty to warn.” Donald Trump recently promised that, if elected, the American people will “not have to vote again.” Our country is in danger of putting an authoritarian dictator back into power. Bandy Lee is at the forefront of the great minds warning us against this folly.  

What was behind the mainstream media’s silencing of credible experts like Dr. Lee, and me, and even the most renowned names in mental health? We discuss this and many important topics like the “duty to warn” and the importance of mental health, especially in people who are supposed to be public servants. We discuss the 25^th Amendment of the Constitution and how it could be bolstered to prevent anyone so grossly incompetent from coming to the Presidency again. We also discuss the corrupt and authoritarian family court system in the United States, which has contributed to diminishing our collective mental health: the subject of a forthcoming book.  

Censorship in the Media  

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President became an unprecedented New York Times bestseller. Within three months of its release, it was the number one topic of conversation, covered by mass media, and all significant networks were inviting Dr. Lee on to speak. A misinformation crisis began when the American Psychiatric Association (APA) aggressively silenced the topic. They tried to justify their public campaigns against independent experts by saying that speaking about the mental health aspects of the Trump Crisis would create a stigma against those with mental health issues. As Bandy Lee states, ‘All the literature shows that silence promotes stigma,’ not discussion. 

The APA said the experts in the book were unethical in making a “diagnosis” without meeting him in person. It said it violated the APA ethics code, but Dr. Lee was not making a diagnosis when calling Trump “dangerous.” She is not even a member of the APA, and no other mental health association has such a “rule.” Instead, the universal Declaration of Geneva, a pledge that all health professionals take, regardless of nationality or membership, states that it is unethical to be silent in the face of a dangerous government. Yet, Dr. Lee and other psychiatrists have experienced censorship in the media due to the misuse of the so-called “Goldwater Rule.” 

There is an obligation for experts to warn the public of a dangerous elected official, but they continue to be censored, and their warnings of dangers are ignored. As a result, no suggested interventions into the social, cultural, geopolitical, and civic dangers have been implemented. Despite Bandy Lee not being a member of the APA and the Goldwater rule being subordinate to the Declaration of Geneva and the overarching duty to protect society against a dangerous and unfit president or presidential candidate, she and her colleagues are aggressively silenced. The APA should lead the way in an ethical and professional obligation to protect society from dangerous individuals. Instead, it had been meeting with major media outlets to censor these experts. Now, all major television and radio outlets are scared to have top experts speak about this topic, and the New York Times removes Dr. Lee’s quotes when she is interviewed. If we cannot talk about this problem, it is worrying for the future of our country and the world.  

The Psychological Dangers of Donald Trump Leading to a Public Health Crisis  

The opinions that Trump espouses are not simply a different political stance or everyday ideological discourse but symptomatic of mental unfitness, Dr. Lee argues. She calls the replication of his symptoms “Trump Contagion,” as they spread across the general population like a contagious disease. When a person that dangerous is in power, be it Trump or a cult leader, false beliefs and misinformation spread more rapidly. In today’s era of social media, 24/7, it isn’t hard for a figure like this to prey on psychologically vulnerable people.  

Dr. Bandy Lee had said that controlling this mental health pandemic would be the key to controlling the COVID pandemic. Public health measures were ignored due to Trump’s authoritarianism and incompetence, and America had the highest death rate per 100,000 of the population in the industrialized world. 

Without proper intervention, Trump has become more violent and delusional in his thoughts and beliefs, expanding into the public through the cult of Trump. Mental health experts are usually involved and consulted when we need to protect the public and contain dangerous individuals. From the courts to law enforcement, we rely on their opinion, yet professional opinion is ignored when discussing the far greater danger of an unstable elected figure. As a result, deception and information control were used to win elections and to advance an agenda previously unpopular with the public, who would otherwise recognize it as destructive.  

The 25th Amendment  

The 25th Amendment includes a clause that if a president could not carry out his office duties for physical or mental capacity reasons, then the cabinet and vice president could step in and even involuntarily remove him or her. Medical and mental health data should have driven this exercise, but instead, because of the silencing of mental health experts, this became a purely political exercise conducted by the Vice President.   

Bandy Lee and her colleagues told the then-speaker, Nancy Pelosi, that mental health professionals should be consulted to succeed in her impeachment of Trump. A letter signed by almost 900 mental health professionals was sent to her. They were not consulted, and both impeachments were unsuccessful. Regarding prosecution, Bandy Lee and other experts also advised, “This should be carried out in a way that takes into account mental health aspects so that Donald Trump cannot turn it into a purely political exercise and make it ineffective.”  

Dangerous Authoritarian Individuals in Power 

Dr. Bandy Lee notes that over her last 25 years of practice, “the dangerous personalities that used to be confined in jails and prisons are increasingly taking up leadership positions in society.” We have seen what happens when authoritarians like Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin run societies. However, due to a crisis of misinformation and a lack of experience with these individuals, the public is unaware of the widescale atrocities that become possible….

The World Mental Health Coalition (WMHC)  

Experts’ societal role is to fight against this misinformation and mind control and to share knowledge with the public for democracy to continue. Dr. Bandy Lee formed the World Mental Health Coalition in late 2017, consisting of thousands of mental health professionals concerned about societal mental health. It aims to bring together professionals to “educate the public and policymakers about fitness for government leadership and to heal the fabric of society to prevent dangerous leadership in the first place.” Together, we can move towards a democracy where the public can access knowledge to make informed decisions. 

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is inviting you to a live session in a series: