Prescription for Justice - 06-01-20 (05-12-21)

This episode features Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv, forensic psychiatrist, internationally recognized expert on violence, member of the faculty of Yale School of Medicine’s Law and Psychiatry Division, consultant to the UN and WHO, co-founder and director of the World Mental Health Coalition, and editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump (New York, 2017, Thomas Dunne Books, St Martin’s Press). Dr. Lee describes how a group of concerned psychiatrists came together to organize a conference and then publish this book, which elucidates the reasons Donald Trump is mentally unfit to be president and represents a threat to democracy, national security, and human survival. We discuss these reasons, various interpretations of the American Psychiatric Association’s Goldwater Rule regarding the duties of psychiatrists who evaluate public figures, the difference between mental illness and mental capacity/fitness for duty, historical demagogues, recent controversies involving the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, and physicians’ ethical obligation to warn.