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For a safer world
The World Mental Health Coalition Documents eBook or Paperback
– August 2020
With Introduction by Bandy Lee, MD, MDiv
The new edition! Ten more mental health experts join the original 27
to illustrate the social, cultural, and geopolitical consequences of
Trump’s psychological dangerousness.
CAN DONALD TRUMP’S MENTAL IMPAIRMENT BE DEADLY FOR AMERICAN FAMILIES
PATHOLOGICAL NARCISSISM, INFORMATION SUPPRESSION, AND A GLOBAL PANDEMIC
Minneapolis, MN, and nationwide locations — On 13 March 2020, mental Health Experts specializing in Donald Trump’s type of pathologies conducted an online briefing for the American people regarding the president’s mental incapacity to lead America’s critical response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Quote from Dr. Bandy Lee: “Weeks of mismanagement and dangerous misstatements are costing lives. We must immediately highlight expert information and advice, including those of mental health experts.”
To watch a recording of the panel, please click below:
PANELISTS:
John Zinner, M.D. – former NIMH Researcher and Professor of Psychiatry, George Washington University
Ellyn Kaschak, Ph.D. – a founder of Feminist Psychology and Professor of Psychology, San Jose State University
Susan Vaughan, M.D. – psychoanalyst and Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University
Edwin Fisher, Ph.D., – clinical psychologist and Professor of Behavioral and Public Health, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
MODERATOR:
Richard Painter, Esq. – former Chief White House Counsel under the George W. Bush Administration
ORGANIZERS:
Bandy Lee and Richard Greene
“THE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP: THE TRAILER”
WHEN IS THE RIGHT TIME TO TALK ABOUT A PRESIDENT’S MENTAL HEALTH?
New Haven, CT — At our panel discussion at Yale Law School on 19 September 2019, Yale Law School alumnus and Chief White House Ethics Counsel under the George W. Bush administration, Richard W. Painter, and cultural psychologist and past President of the Association of Black Psychologists, Dr. Kevin Washington, spoke on the public interest of hearing from mental health experts and the cultural perils that can result when experts are silenced.
To watch a recording of the panelist presentations, please click below:
Critical Mental Health Questions for Robert Mueller
Washington, DC, and nationwide locations — At our online town hall on 23 July 2019, we opened with a 10-minute highlights video from our interdisciplinary conference in March, a 6-minute video illustrating our report on the Special Counsel’s report from April, and a presentation of five critical questions we were posing to Robert Mueller on the day before his testimony. The same content was provided to Congress members in a private session earlier that day.
To watch the live stream of our town hall, please click below:
PANELISTS AND AUTHORS OF THE REPORT TO THE MUELLER REPORT:
Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div. – forensic psychiatrist and violence expert at Yale School of Medicine
Edwin B. Fisher, Ph.D. – clinical psychologist at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Leonard L. Glass, M.D., M.P.H. – psychiatrist at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School
James R. Merikangas, M.D. – forensic neuropsychiatrist and violence expert at George Washington University
James Gilligan, M.D. – forensic psychiatrist and violence expert at New York University School of Law
Click here to download pdf of conference information.
WORLD MENTAL HEALTH COALITION INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE
The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership
Washington, DC — At the National Press Club Grand Ballroom, on 19 March 2019, a panel of 13 leading experts from the fields of psychiatry, law, history, political science, economics, social psychology, nuclear science, climate science, journalism, and propaganda studies came together in unprecedented ways during unprecedented times to discuss the urgent topic of presidential fitness.
To watch our live stream, please click below:
To watch us on C-SPAN, please click below:
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SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
Bandy Lee – Leading Violence Expert, Forensic Psychiatrist at Yale School of Medicine, President of the World Mental Health Coalition
Jerrold Post – former Leading CIA Psychological Profiler and Director of Political Psychology Program at George Washington University
Jeffrey Sachs – Leading Economist, University Professor, and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University
Richard Painter – former Chief White House Ethics Counsel for the Bush/Cheney Administration and Professor of Law at University of Minnesota
Ruth Ben-Ghiat – Leading Historian, Professor at New York University, and Expert on Fascism, Authoritarianism, War, and Propaganda
Gar Alperovitz – Leading Political Scientist, Founding Fellow of leading Policy Institutes, and former Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland
Philip Zimbardo – Leading Social Psychologist and Principal Investigator of the Stanford Prison Experiment
Joseph Romm – Leading Climate Expert, former Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress
Scott Ritter – Leading Nuclear Expert and former United Nations Weapons Inspector in Iraq
Jason Stanley – Leading Philosopher of Language and Epistemology and Professor at Yale University
David Cay Johnston – Pulitzer Prize-winning Investigative Journalist and Reporter on Worldwide Tax, Public Finance, and Business
Jamie Raskin – U.S. Representative for Maryland’s Eighth Congressional District
Mehdi Hasan – British Political Journalist and Broadcaster for Al Jazeera and the Intercept
Click here to download flyer with conference information.
WHO WE ARE
WORLD MENTAL HEALTH COALITION
Meet the 37 authors of the book and thousands of other professionals who have come together in historically unprecedented ways to offer our consensus view that Donald Trump’s mental state presents a clear and present danger to the nation and the world.
An ethics conference on the topic at Yale School of Medicine in April 2017 drew national attention and led to the first book, which became an instant New York Times bestseller and the Washington Post’s “most courageous book of the year.” Demands for an update gave rise to a second book, which was released in March 2019. Meanwhile, we have become the nation’s first and largest mental health professionals-only organization to address the issue of dangerous mental instability in the highest office of the land. Joining with our international partners, we have recently renamed ourselves the World Mental Health Coalition (formerly the National Coalition of Concerned Mental Health Experts).
While Mr. Trump in the office of the U.S. presidency is our greatest and most immediate concern, we are also working toward prevention by helping humanity to build for itself a healthier and more sustainable world where impaired leaders are less likely to rise to power. While we can assess societal mental health, we cannot improve it on our own. Multidisciplinary partnerships are necessary to that end, which is why we began with an interdisciplinary conference with the release of the second book. Subsequently, we performed a mental capacity evaluation based on the Mueller report (mental capacity is a basic requirement for fitness) and presented it at an online town hall the day before Robert Mueller’s testimony.
In December 2019, we submitted a petition to the U.S. Congress with over 800 mental health professional signatories, asking that the impeachment proceedings consider mental health aspects, forewarning an event such as the assassination of a top Iranian general. Recently, with the coronavirus pandemic, we issued a “Prescription for Survival,” accessible at the top of this page. Our continued purpose is to bring mental health into national discourse, for we believe that a healthy and empowered polity must have access to facts as well as to expertise.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMERS
We are not the ‘Duty to Warn’ group: Duty to Warn (https://www.adutytowarn.org/ and https://twitter.com/duty2warn) is a political group that continues to copy and to claim ownership of our efforts. Multiple mental health professionals, including the editor, have asked repeatedly to be taken off its Super PAC, on which we were added against our will. We object to acting on the part of a political party, using our profession for political or profit motives, and soliciting big partisan donors, which forfeits our ability to speak as professionals. We also do not diagnose, advocate for specific political solutions, or approve of a group presenting itself as “mental health professionals” when most members are laypersons. We oppose its use of our names for political and financial gain, especially without our consent.
We take ethics seriously: Both the president and the vice president of our organization have been staunch defenders of the Goldwater rule for decades. This is why we consider what the American Psychiatric Association has done under the Trump administration to be especially egregious. It failed to clarify to the public that the Goldwater rule is an affirmative obligation: that we participate in activities that improve the community and better public health—and educate the public when asked about public figures while refraining from diagnosis. By inflating the “do not diagnose” part while suppressing the “educate to better public health” part, it gagged an entire profession and protected a destructive government. We object to this politicization of psychiatric ethics by placing a public figure over our responsibility to public health and safety.
More on the political use of the Goldwater rule is explained here:
