Psych profs ask Obama to force Trump to undergo psychiatric evaluation: What Obama should do

Psych profs ask Obama to force Trump to undergo psychiatric evaluation: What Obama should do

If you’ll allow the Huffington Post to play amateur shrink — and even if you won’t — an article at the far-Left website provides its readers with a modest proposal for ensuring that Donald Trump never takes the oath of office.

The author, Richard Greene, prefaces the piece by acknowledging receipt of a “stunning letter to President Obama” by a source who “knew that I had been interviewing Psychiatrists [sic] and Psychologists [sic] about Donald Trump’s alleged ‘Narcissistic Personality Disorder’.”

The beginning of the article proper (which sounds like a continuation of the preface) reads:

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

Virtually every mental health professional I interviewed told me that they believed, with 100% certainty, that Mr. Trump satisfied the DSM criteria of this incurable illness and that, as a result, he is a serious danger to the country and the world.

It’s hard to miss the rich irony of asking Barack Obama to order a psychiatric evaluation for a would-be president suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, but the money portion of the article is the letter itself, which follows:

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

November 29, 2016

Dear President Obama,

We are writing to express our grave concern regarding the mental stability of our President-Elect. Professional standards do not permit us to venture a diagnosis for a public figure whom we have not evaluated personally. Nevertheless, his widely reported symptoms of mental instability — including grandiosity, impulsivity, hypersensitivity to slights or criticism, and an apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality — lead us to question his fitness for the immense responsibilities of the office. We strongly recommend that, in preparation for assuming these responsibilities, he receive a full medical and neuropsychiatric evaluation by an impartial team of investigators.

Sincerely,

Judith Herman, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School

Nanette Gartrell, M.D.
Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
University of California, San Francisco (1988-2011)
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School (1983-87)

Dee Mosbacher, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Clinical Professor
Department of Community Health Systems
University of California, San Francisco (2005-2013)

So, what should Obama do with the letter? Ignore it. Burn it even. Apart from the gross impropriety of the suggestion, the President of the United States has no legal grounds for ordering a health examination of any kind for any private citizen. Nowhere in his enumerated powers is such a power conferred.

As for Herman, Gartrell, and Mosbacher, the schools they teach at should promptly sanction them for violating the Goldwater Rule. As an article at the website of the American Psychiatric Aassociation explains:

Since 1973, the American Psychiatric Association and its members have abided by a principle commonly known as “the Goldwater Rule,” which prohibits psychiatrists from offering opinions on someone they have not personally evaluated. The rule is so named because of its association with an incident that took place during the 1964 presidential election. During that election, Fact magazine published a survey in which they queried some 12,356 psychiatrists on whether candidate Sen. Barry Goldwater, the GOP nominee, was psychologically fit to be president. A total of 2,417 of those queried responded, with 1,189 saying that Goldwater was unfit to assume the presidency. [Emphasis added]

As I wrote earlier, liberals are now willing to take any action, regradless of how extreme, in the vain hope of reversing the outcome of an election with which they are displeased. It is high time they grew up.

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

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