In case you have wondered about the psychological well-being of President Donald Trump, answers have been provided in a new book just published last week, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. In this book, 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assess the president.
From the summary of the book:
Since the start of Donald Trump’s presidential run, one question has quietly but urgently permeated the observations of concerned citizens: what is wrong with him? Constrained by the American psychiatric Association’s Goldwater Rule, which inhibits mental health professionals from diagnosing public figures they have not personally examined, many of those qualified to answer this question have shied away from discussing the issue at all. The public has thus been left to wonder whether he is mad, bad, or both.
In the Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health experts argued that, in Mr. Trump’s case, their moral and civic “duty to warn” America supersedes professional neutrality. They then explore Trump’s symptoms and potentially relevant diagnoses to find a complex, if also dangerously mad, man.
Phillip Zimbardo and Rosemary Sword, for instance, explain Trump’s impulsivity in terms of “unbridled and extreme present hedonism.” Greg Malkin writes on pathological narcissism and politics as a lethal mix. Gail Sheehy, on a lack of trust that exceeds paranoia. Lance Dodes on sociopathy. Robert J Lifton, on the “malignant normality” that can set into everyday life if psychiatrists do not speak up.
His madness is catching, too. From the trauma people have experienced under the Trump administration to the cult-like characteristics of his followers, he has created unprecedented mental health consequences across our nation and beyond.
It’s not in our heads. It’s in his.
And the book goes on to say: there are those who still hold out hope that this president can be prevailed upon to listen to reason and curb his erratic behavior. Our professional experience would suggest otherwise. We collectively warned that anyone as mentally unstable as this man simply should not be entrusted with the life and death powers of the presidency.