It's Official: Top Psychiatrists at Yale Conference Warn That Trump Has a 'Dangerous Mental Illness'
35 psychiatrists this week gathered at a conference at Yale to sound the alarm on what they believe is President Donald Trump’s “dangerous mental illness.”
Per The Independent, the psychiatrists met at Yale’s School of Medicine on Thursday to talk about Donald Trump’s mental health, which they warned was frighteningly unstable.
“We have an ethical responsibility to warn the public about Donald Trump’s dangerous mental illness,” said Dr. John Gartner, a practicing psychotherapist who advised psychiatric residents at Johns Hopkins University Medical School and who has in the past warned Trump is a “psychiatric Frankenstein monster.”
Gartner and other psychiatrists at the conference argued that Trump suffers from a particularly malignant case of pathological narcissism, which makes him a danger to the country and the world.
“Worse than just being a liar or a narcissist, in addition he is paranoid, delusional and grandiose thinking and he proved that to the country the first day he was president,” Gartner explained. “If Donald Trump really believes he had the largest crowd size in history, that’s delusional.”
Dr. James Gilligan, a psychiatrist and professor at New York University, said that Trump’s erratic behavior has similarly disturbed him — despite the fact that he has lots of experience working with violent convicted criminals.
“I’ve worked with murderers and rapists, I can recognize dangerousness from a mile away,” he said. “You don’t have to be an expert on dangerousness or spend fifty years studying it like I have in order to know how dangerous this man is.”
Typically, psychology professionals refrain from diagnosing public figures whom they haven’t personally interviewed, but Dr. Bandy Lee, an assistant clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine, told the conference that the dangers Trump’s mental health present are simply too great to stay silent.
“As some prominent psychiatrists have noted, [Trump’s mental health] is the elephant in the room,” Lee explained. “I think the public is really starting to catch on and widely talk about this now.”
Update from the organizer of the Yale event: “The panel at Yale School of Medicine abided by ‘the Goldwater rule.’ Eminent psychiatrists were invited to speak about whether there are other ethical rules that override it, as in ordinary practice. The organizer, Dr. Bandy Lee, agrees with the Goldwater rule, although she is troubled by its recent expansion (as of March 16, 2017) and the silencing of debate. She hopes that the public and politicians will understand that mental health issues are not to be used as a weapon, just as other health issues are not. Psychologist Dr. Gartner was invited as an activist but was not on the actual panel. The organizer emphasizes that the event was independent and did not represent the views of Yale University or Yale School of Medicine.”
