Gagged by Goldwater: Speaking up about Trump, Part II

1. Lee, B.X. “Speaking Up about Trump, An Experience of a Lifetime,” ROOM: A sketchbook for Analytic Action, 2.19 (February 2019)

As I write this at the turn of the year, hospitals are overflowing, and our medical system is about to collapse. Yet the approaching loss of a half million lives in the United States from COVID-19 was entirely preventable. For me, the disastrous mismanagement of the pandemic was always more a mental health issue—of the head of state. So is the reckless discrediting of a normal election, the violence in the streets that have now flowed into the Capitol, and the near destruction of our democracy. This was all foreseen by mental health experts and may have been prevented had the discussion about the president's dangerous psychology not been quashed by a single mental health organization: the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

2. BillMoyers.com Team. “Bill Moyers talks with Dr. Bandy Lee about The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” Moyers on Democracy podcast (January 14, 2021)

Having spent most of my career as a specialist in violence prevention applying psychiatric principles to public health, I could see the vast psychological influence Trump would have on society. I was deeply concerned that silencing experts would enable the spread of mental pathology alongside an inability on the part of government to apply correct interventions, both of which would ultimately result in immense suffering and societal damage.

3. Lewis, T. “The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists,” Scientific American (January 11, 2021)

An alarming event in March 2017 prompted me to act: the APA's revival of the obscure Goldwater rule, a guideline that prohibited the psychiatric diagnosis of a public figure without personal examination and consent. The APA expanded this “rule” to prohibit psychiatrists from publicly commenting on any objective aspect of a public figure and stipulated no emergency exception. In other word