Photo by Gage Skidmore/CC BY-SA2.0
The American Psychiatric Association made a surprise appearance in our presidential campaign slogfest. It makes perfect sense at this point. The Association has issued a reminder warning to psychiatrists across the country: "No psychoanalyzing Donald Trump." That's a pretty tough call.
The state of Donald Trump’s mental health has become part of the national conversation. It’s even become a Twitter hashtag: #trumpdiagnosis. A former Harvard Medical School dean tweeted that Trump had narcissistic personality disorder. A Northwestern University professor published a 9000 word psychological evaluation of Trump. The fact that the American Psychiatric Association felt the need to make their official "unethical" stamp public again last week brings up a rule that few of us knew existed.
It’s called The Goldwater Rule, and it prohibits psychiatrists from giving professional opinions about public figures they haven't personally evaluated. The rule grew out of Senator Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. Goldwater was an out of the box right wing Republican politician, so much so the candidate bashing of that era got out of hand. It included a large group of generally surveyed psychiatrists who agreed that Goldwater was psychologically unfit to be president. Even though he hadn't visited any of their couches. After this election, they may feel the need to create an updated rule and re-brand it the “Trump Rule.”
For the rest of us not formally trained in the mental health field, it's gotten close to impossible not to analyze Donald Trump's behavior. It's the impact his words and behavior are having on others, here and around the world, that remains of most concern. Whether it's your friends or neighbors, almost everyone has some kind of analytic opinion of him. Including the president of the United States.
I've grown weary of hearing excuses for Trump's bad behavior. How he's just not politically correct. Or how his campaign is disruptive politics. He's not an establishment politician. Or he can't control himself. It's time for Donald Trump to take responsibility for his actions and be held accountable.
Speaking from the White House, President Obama finally got to the point where he made a remarkable statement about the Republican nominee after Trump attacked a Muslim Gold Star family whose son had been killed in the Iraq war. Describing his feelings as “unprecedented,” Obama said, “The Republican nominee is unfit to serve as president.”