Mainstream media is playing a dangerous game: mental health experts

President Donald Trump is a habitual liar who may also suffer from serious mental illness, a seasoned journalist argued on Monday — but the mainstream media is too cowardly to call it out.

“For a while now, I’ve been imploring the leaders of our top news organizations to call out Donald Trump’s derangement,” wrote Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch and former journalist at The Huffington Post and The Intercept. “My argument is simple: It is the central, underlying explanation for everything else they’re covering.”

Yet, as Froomkin pointed out, “They won’t do it. Their arguments: It would appear partisan; We don’t want to take sides; And (more reasonably) we prohibit the use of language associated with mental illness unless a person has been diagnosed as mentally ill. (I wrestle with a variation of this last one myself: How do you call him insane without stigmatizing insane people?)”

Even though Froomkin can understand journalists being reluctant to discuss mental illness, Froomkin argued that Trump’s chronic untrustworthiness “cannot be seriously in doubt.” In addition to telling literally thousands of documented lies since becoming president, Froomkin observed that Trump’s dishonesty also shapes his policies.

“His about-faces on such issues as tariffs and Iran have created chaos in the financial markets,” Froomkin wrote. “How about interjecting some skepticism when he says something absurd in the first place, so that people won’t overreact when he says it – and again when he takes it back?” It is both an issue of public responsibility and one of having “self-respect. One of Trump’s most consistent messages to his supporters has been to mistrust the mainstream media and its ‘fake news.’ But the primary source of ‘fake news’ in the mainstream media is news reports based on Trump’s lies. So stop doing that.”

After elaborating on how Trump’s dishonesty has harmed America’s ability to successfully prosecute the war he started in Iran, Froomkin predicted that Trump will ultimately be politically done in by his inability to contain the fallout of that conflict.

“Despite the strong incentives to say whatever is necessary to legitimate military operations, the lies will be exposed over time,” Froomkin wrote. “Presidents cannot ignore the long-term costs that result from dismissing the truth in pursuit of national security.”

This does not absolve the media of its responsibility to be truthful, though, although they have not done this.

“The elite media still more often than not treats his words as if they were coming from a normal president: Dutifully and stenographically,” Froomkin said. “I don’t know how many times I have fruitlessly called for an end to media’s normalization of this very damaged and disturbed man.” That can only happen, he concluded, when they “tell the truth” about Trump’s untruthfulness, despite being accused of partisanship or taking sides.

While Froomkin refrained from questioning Trump’s mental health, others have been less reticent to do so.

“A lot of people are increasingly concerned about Trump’s mental acuity right now,” says Dr. David Andersen, associate professor in US Politics at Durham University, told iPaper earlier in March. “His public appearances are clearly growing less focused, more rambling, and less clear about what he is trying to communicate.” Also speaking with iPaper earlier in March, Dr. John Gartner, American psychologist, psychiatrist and former assistant professor at John Hopkins Medical School,

“On the red carpet at Davos you may have noticed him weaving,” Gartner explained. “That relates to one of the signs of what I think he has: frontotemporal dementia. That walk is called a wide base gait where he swings his right leg in kind of a semicircle and that drives him to the left,” Gartner continued. “That seems to have gotten dramatically worse recently. It may be related to the stroke I think he’s had on the left side of his body.”

In 2023, this journalist wrote an article for Salon Magazine about the Goldwater Rule, a concept promulgated by the American Psychiatric Association which frowns upon practitioners speculating about the mental health of public figures they have not personally analyzed. Of the five mental health experts who discussed the subject at the time, only one offered an unqualified endorsement of the rule.

“The Goldwater Rule is relevant today for the same reasons it was relevant when it was adopted,” psychiatrist Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum from Columbia University told Salon at the time. “Psychiatrists (the only mental health professionals technically covered by the Rule) are not capable of rendering accurate diagnoses in the absence of a personal examination; doing so risks dissemination of inaccurate information that can harm the person supposedly being diagnosed; and this kind of ‘shoot-from-the-hip’ approach to diagnosis can legitimately call into question the objectivity and responsibility of the psychiatric profession, thus deterring patients from seeking care.”

By contrast Dr. Jerome Kroll, a professor of psychiatry emeritus at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, viewed the Goldwater Rule as a violation of psychiatrists’ free speech rights.

“What psychiatrists owe their patients (confidentiality, respect, thoughtfulness, technical knowledge) has nothing to do with offering public comments about a public figure about whom there is a controversy,” Kroll told Salon at the time. “I see this as an issue of free speech, which often leads to ill-advised, divisive, even stupid statements, but not to an ethical breach of my professional responsibilities. A court of law can determine my liability if the person commented on takes offense.”

He also pointed out that the rule holds psychiatrists to an unusual methodological standard.

“Doctors in emergency rooms frequently have to make rapid diagnoses and important decisions of persons they have never seen before, have little reliable information, no previous records, and no reliable way to evaluate the accuracy of the person they are assessing,” Kroll said. “Yet they have to assign a working diagnosis and a treatment plan, such as involuntary admission to a psychiatric ward, on just a few salient features of the interviewed person. This is accepted and ethical practice for doing all this; there is no luxury of delay in the ER, other than perhaps an overnight stay for observation. The APA leadership just ignores these realities of daily work of psychiatrists.”

Psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula told Salon at the time that the Goldwater Rule similarly ignores the practical realities of mental health professionals.

“If a person is in the public eye and we are able to observe their behavior, their use of language, their appearance, and also have other historical data on them (past behavior, shifts from past behavior) — while I acknowledge that it is only the publicly facing behavior we are seeing — is it any different than a client coming in and telling us only what they tell us and leaving out what they want to leave out?” Durvasula pointed out.

Dr. David Reiss, a psychiatrist who co-authored the book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” emailed Salon at the time that the Goldwater Rule “is at least out of date – and in my opinion, was never well conceived.” His co-author, psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee, told Salon at the time that in her opinion the rule “violates the Geneva Declaration and most other core tenets of medical ethics. So I believe it should either be radically modified or be eliminated,” as it denies the public important information about political figures.

“Of interest to the public are fitness and dangerousness, and these are different mental health assessments than diagnosis,” Lee said. “Given the dangers of unfitness in an influential office, it should be one of the most vital societal responsibilities for health professionals to point this out, in order to protect the public’s health and safety.”

Despite being scolded by her colleagues for breaking the Goldwater Rule, Lee warned this journalist for Salon Magazine less than a week before the 2020 presidential election that Trump’s mental health would mean he’d have a “frightening” response to losing.

“Just as one once settled for adulation in lieu of love, one may settle for fear when adulation no longer seems attainable,” Lee explained. “Rage attacks are common, for people are bound to fall short of expectation for such a needy personality—and eventually everyone falls into this category. But when there is an all-encompassing loss, such as the loss of an election, it can trigger a rampage of destruction and reign of terror in revenge against an entire nation that has failed him.”

Lee added, “It is far easier for the pathological narcissist to consider destroying oneself and the world, especially its ‘laughing eyes,’ than to retreat into becoming a ‘loser’ and a ‘sucker’ — which to someone suffering from this condition will feel like psychic death.”

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