President Trump’s preoccupation with his own image amid the spread of the coronavirus is “putting lives at risk” and Vice President Pence is only “enabling” him, Yale psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee told Salon in an interview this week.
Lee is a forensic psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine who also teaches at Yale Law School and has spent the last three years urging Congress to respond more forcefully to the dangers posed by what she sees as the president’s deteriorating mental health. Lee, who consults widely with state and foreign governments on public health approaches to violence prevention, urged the House Judiciary Committee to include a panel of mental health experts during Trump’s impeachment and called for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to request an involuntary 72-hour psychiatric hold of the president.
Some mental health experts have pushed back on Lee’s comments. Dr. Amy Barnhost, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Davis, previously told Salon that such calls would do more harm than good. Lee argues that Congress and other government officials have enabled Trump’s worst tendencies by not acknowledging the risk posed by the president’s mental state. Continue reading.