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That is an awkward question, but it's one that's being asked
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on every major news network in America.
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President Trump's fitness for office is now the top story in the country.
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Reports suggest that even Trump's advisers are worried about it.
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Everyone around the president questions his intelligence and fitness for office.
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100 percent of the people around him.
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Concerns have gotten so bad that Trump agreed to be screened for dementia
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as part of his last health exam.
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None of this has to do with Trump's political positions.
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They have to do with his ability to understand the world around him
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and make good decisions.
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Everybody wants to know: is this president of sound mind?
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And if talking about this kind of thing makes you uncomfortable,
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wait 'til you see how much it's stressing out actual mental health experts.
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In a series of tweets, the president insisted that he is "like really smart" and a "very stable genius."
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Last October, a group of 27 mental health experts
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published this book: The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.
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In it, they warn that Trump's behavior shows him to be dangerously unstable,
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describing him as a pathological narcissist who's delusional, suffers from paranoid ideation,
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lacks conscience and empathy, and exhibits a host of destructive and dangerous psychiatric symptoms.
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Yeah, it's rough.
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Two months after its publishing, the book's editor met with 12 US senators
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to talk about Trump's mental fitness.
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That editor's name?
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Dr. Bandy Lee.
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I am a forensic psychiatrist at Yale School of Medicine
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and an internationally recognized expert on violence.
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Since the book came out, Dr. Lee has become kind of the face of mental health experts
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warning about Trump.
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We express our consensus view that
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Some of the psychological signs are:
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All of these are highly associated with violence.
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One thing I noticed is that she starts almost every interview about Trump by saying
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this: I'd like to make clear that I speak for myself
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She did it in our interview too.
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That's because what Dr. Lee and her colleagues are doing,
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discussing the mental health of a politician who isn't their patient,
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is pretty controversial.
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And to understand why, we have to go back to 1964.
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Don't tune out.
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I'll make this quick.
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Back then, Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater was running for president.
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He was a far-right candidate who talked openly about wanting to use nuclear weapons
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and was endorsed by the KKK.
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I know, time is a flat circle.
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In response to Goldwater's candidacy, Fact Magazine published this piece,
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in which over 1,000 psychiatrists argued that he was psychologically unfit to be president.
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Goldwater lost the election, but he sued the magazine's publisher for libel
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and won, causing the magazine to shut down.
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In response, the American Psychiatric Association created this guideline,
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which states that when it comes to public figures,
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it is unethical for psychiatrists to offer a professional opinion
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unless they've conducted an examination on that person.
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They called it: the Goldwater Rule.
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Well, I was going to say it.
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But yeah, the Goldwater Rule.
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Which brings us back to this book.
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Lee and her colleagues argue that they're not violating the Goldwater Rule because
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We're not interested in making a diagnosis.
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They're assessing how dangerous he might be based on his public behavior.
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Most of the information that you get about dangerousness
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comes from observation of their behavior, watching their interactions with people,
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assessing them in real situations, reports of how they respond,
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objective signs that we can still evaluate even if it's not enough to make a diagnosis.
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But in March, the APA expanded the Goldwater Rule,
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clarifying that rendering any professional opinion
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about a public figure's affect, behavior, speech,
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or other presentation is unethical.
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In other words, unless Trump agrees to a full mental health screening
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— never going to happen — tons of psychiatrists are basically barred
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from commenting on his mental health.
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And that is very alarming to me.
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Many people call it a gag rule.
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Gag rule, I'm into it.
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You would be.
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That gag rule has a big impact on how the media
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talks about Trump's mental fitness.
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Lee worries that if they can't talk to mental health experts,
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journalists are more likely to normalize Trump's abnormal behavior.
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Most people are not used to seeing impaired individuals
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day in and day out, so
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It's tough to grapple with the possibility that
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the person in charge of our nuclear arsenal might be deeply unstable.
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So instead, our brains look for other explanations for Trump's behavior.
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I want to believe he's just dishonest, not delusional.
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Trump peddles conspiracy theories about Obama's birth certificate, and he's just playing
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to his base.
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Is there some strategy in bringing up the Obama birth certificate thing again?
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Trump is not delusional.
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He's being very politically savvy.
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What should be evidence of a serious emergency gets downplayed as just Trump being Trump.
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Donald Trump's a different type of guy.
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I mean, he operates differently.
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That difference has made him very successful.
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One of Lee's colleagues has a great name for this phenomenon.
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He calls it "malignant normality."
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Ooh. I know.
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It's a great drag name.
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The result is that journalists end up missing big danger signs,
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signs that mental health experts could catch.
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Pundits will simply say, “That's just Trump being Trump,”
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or, “It's tough talk.”
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One crucial contribution that mental health professionals can make is to
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But the bigger problem with the APA's gag order
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is that it surrenders debates about Trump's mental fitness
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to non-experts.
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Isn't it remarkable that we're talking about the president's mental state?
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To political commentators or partisan pundits who actually aren't qualified to talk about this.
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I'm not a doctor, but I can tell you what I see and hear.
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I'm not a doctor, but I can see that he is not the sharp mind that he was.
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I'm not a doctor, but his behavior is erratic.
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To me, that's classic narcissism.
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I'm not a doctor but...
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Leaving mental health issues to pundits, non-professionals,
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can keep the public in the dark and keep them
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confused.
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These discussions can quickly become train wrecks,
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where mental fitness is used as a weapon to smear political opponents.
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So many of the traits of a sociopath this man is displaying.
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I can't explain this crazy behavior, but I can call it crazy.
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You saw it during the Obama years, when Fox News
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regularly made wild accusations about Obama's mental state.
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We all know that Obama is a narcissist, but this is bordering on the pathological.
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He doesn't seem to have empathy or feelings for Americans.
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He is certainly unfit to be president.
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And Lee worries that this kind of coverage trivializes real concerns
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about Trump's mental fitness, reducing them to
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just another talking point for pundits to argue about.
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As this conversation escalates, both sides sort of retreating to their corners.
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The more that mental fitness sounds like a left-wing talking point,
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the harder it is to take it seriously.
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To now say, “Oh, well, look, he seems unhinged,” does seem like you're not willing to accept
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the political reality that you are living with.
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To accept that it is simply a political issue or a partisan issue
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is an attempt to normalize the discourse.
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No one's a doctor tonight that I've seen.
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And somehow say, because you don't like what he said tonight in his speech,
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that he's somehow unfit to be commander in chief,
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that is the most ridiculous...
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Whoa, whoa, whoa, everybody stop, stop.
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The original goal of the Goldwater Rule was to help prevent mental health from being politicized.
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But if the last few months have shown anything, it's that silencing mental health experts
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does the opposite.
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Politicization is almost inevitable without expert input.
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Mental health expertise, just like medical expertise,
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is neutral on all those grounds.
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Trump has made questions about his mental fitness unavoidable.
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What remains to be seen is whether actual experts
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will be allowed to answer them.