Yale Psychiatrist Claims Pelosi Can Subject Trump to ‘Involuntary’ Mental Health Evaluation

Yale Medicine Professor of Psychiatry Bandy X. Lee claims that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has the “right to have [Trump] submit to an involuntary evaluation.”

Professor Lee, of the Yale University School of Medicine, also serves as president of the World Mental Health Coalition. She has been a longstanding and outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, providing “translations” of his communications on her Twitter feed.

Lee was also an editor on The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, and is part of a movement demanding that the Judiciary Committee bring a panel of mental health experts to join impeachment proceedings.

“As a coworker, she has the right to have him submit to an involuntary evaluation, but she has not,” Lee told Salon. “Anyone can call 911 to report someone who seems dangerous, and family members are the most typical ones to do so. But so can coworkers, and even passersby on the street.”

“The law dictates who can determine right to treatment, or civil commitment, and in all 50 U.S. states this includes a psychiatrist,” she continued. “The advantage of a coworker starting this process is that a court can mandate a mental capacity evaluation before the dangerous person returns to work.”

Lee also believes that those surrounding Trump may be suffering from a “shared psychosis.” She said that “the severity by which others are affected is what induces me to believe that Trump is sometimes truly paranoid and delusional rather than merely lying.”

“We have created one of the most dangerous periods by first delaying impeachment and allowing his false sense of impunity to swell and then proceeding,” Lee warned in the interview. “Impeachment is much needed as ‘limit setting,’ and the House speaker has done well to set limits on the Senate by delaying the articles.”

Still, Lee said the country “simply cannot ignore the dangers” of a President she described as “highly unwell,” and she is “beginning to believe that a mental health hold, which we have tried to avoid, will become inevitable.”