Yale professor and clinical psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee has warned that President Donald Trump may bring about the “extinction of the human species” because of his mental instability.
Lee, who has briefed members of congress on the president’s psychological state, insisted that her extreme prediction was “not hyperbole” but “reality.”
Dr. Lee said told Newsweek that the situation is so grave that “a public health emergency” should be declared that would need to be “responded to as quickly as possible.”
“As more time passes, we come closer to the greatest risk of danger, one that could even mean the extinction of the human species,” she said. “This is not hyperbole. This is the reality.”
Lee was one of the hundreds of self-described mental health experts who issued a statement calling the President’s mental health into question after he responded to a challenge from North Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un.
“North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times,’” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!
Lee, who has been preparing students at Yale Law School to become asylum attorneys since 2003, edited a book of 27 essays on the president’s mental state, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, which was published in October. The authors assert that Trump’s mental state “presents a clear and present danger to our nation,” the Amazon website states.
According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater Rule, members may not comment on the psychological health of someone they haven’t actually examined, but Lee said she doesn’t believe that her evaluation of the President’s mental health violates the rule.
Trump has shown “an attraction to violence and powerful weapons,” Lee said. “He has also repeatedly taunted a hostile nation.”
Lee said that Trump’s speech patterns also say something about the state of the President’s mental health.
“He cannot seem to finish sentences, he derails from his line of thinking, he has loose associations and he jumps from one topic or another,” she said, which could indicate a psychiatric or medical condition.
Following on Trump’s assertions on social media of his mental stability and intelligence, Lee said that deflecting or projecting “are often concerning signs,” and seemed to suggest that Trump could even be a candidate for forcible commitment.
“Usually, as someone becomes mentally impaired, they lose the ability to consider the possibility that something could be wrong,” she said. “That’s why forcible commitment is permitted—because it is their illness speaking, not their own healthy decision making.”
Lee said that a psychological “capacity examination” should be performed on the President as soon as possible,” because of the high stakes involved.
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