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Bandy Lee

 

 

 

Washington Examiner

Trump’s doctor dismisses dementia fears: ‘That’s just tabloid psychiatry’
The Examiner (Washington, DC) 
January 16, 2018 Tuesday

— Excerpt

White House physician Ronny Jackson on Tuesday said the idea that President Trump has mental health issues was “tabloid psychiatry,” dismissing a claim that some mental health experts are making even though they haven’t examined the president.

“People shouldn’t be making those types of assessments about the president unless they’ve had the opportunity to get to know him and examine him, and in my opinion, that’s just tabloid psychiatry and I’m not going to address it or fall into responding to those kinds of questions or accusations,” Jackson told reporters during Tuesday’s White House press briefing when asked to respond to doctors who have said they believe the president shows signs of dementia…

Twenty-seven psychiatrists and mental health experts offered their assessments of Trump’s mental health in a book called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump published last year. The book was edited by Dr. Bandy Lee, a Yale University psychiatrist, who has said the president was “going to unravel, and we are seeing the signs.”

But the American Psychiatric Association recently warned its members not to offer diagnostic opinions about public figures they haven’t examined, per a longstanding doctrine known as the “Goldwater Rule.”

 

 

Armchair Psychiatrist Bandy Lee

 

 

 

 

Washington Times 
Yale anti-Trump psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee gives psychiatry bad name
By Cheryl K. Chumley
December 27, 2019

 

Yale psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, in an interview with Salon, called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to “submit” President Donald Trump “to an involuntary evaluation” — giving Americans, in one fell swoop, one big weighty reason to regard the entire field of mental health therapy with at least a modicum of suspicion.

 

Another reason is that psychiatrists, since Donald Trump’s political rise, have been diagnosing him long-distance as unfit for office.

 

Anther reason is that dozens of psychiatrists and mental health experts banded together to pen a book, with Lee, about the supposed dangers of a Donald Trump presidency.

 

Another reason — well, you get the picture. Lee’s just taking the reputation of therapists as infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome and running with it.

 

“As a coworker,” Lee said to Salon, of the Pelosi-Trump relationship, “she has the right to have him submit to an involuntary evaluation, but she has not. Anyone can call 911 to report someone who seems dangerous, and family members are the most typical ones to do so. But so can coworkers, and even passersby on the street. The law dictates who can determine right to treatment, or civil commitment, and in all 50 U.S. states this includes a psychiatrist.”

 

Lee then went on to say that Pelosi’s delay in sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate could very well lead to — get this — Trump’s mental breakdown.

 

“I am beginning to believe that a mental health hold, which we have tried to avoid, will become inevitable,” Lee told Salon.

 

Oh. My. Gosh.

 

Lee’s the face of a Captain Crunch cereal box prize college degree.

 

Where does she get her diagnosis?

 

From reading Trump’s six-page letter to Pelosi and from his Twitter feed.

 

“I started ‘translating’ Trump’s tweets as a public service sometime in the summer,” she said, “because I could see his negative influence as he tries to reform others’ thoughts. … [Insert dribble here] … [Insert psycho-babble here] … [Blah blah, blah blah blah] … [Trump sucks, I hate Trump, Trump is eeevil] … Some people will dispute the ethics of disclosing what I see, and my response is: danger.”

 

And not the silly old Will Robinson kind. The stranger kind. The really, weally, scawwy stranger danger kind.

 

“We are legally bound to break patient confidentiality for safety reasons,” Lee said in Salon, “and a president is not even a patient.”

 

Lee is one of those psychiatrists who would fiddle around with the brains of mentally disabled children, cutting here to see what would happen, shocking there to see the reaction, if only those dastardly Republicans and Christians — spit, spit — with their freaking ethics and morals would let her.

 

And she’d do it with or without anesthetic.

 

And she’d do it all the while expecting gratitude for the sufferings she endured in the name of science that came by way of the loud, painful, pesky, cries of her patients. Her ears; her poor ears!

 

Not saying she’s heartless. That would be difficult, after all, to diagnose long-distance.

 

Just saying: by all appearances, if appearances mean anything, if looks aren’t deceiving — the woman is bad for business.

 

Lee is a terrible face and voice for the field of psychiatry.

 

 

 

 

American Thinker
The shabby depravity of CNN, NBC, MSNBC, the NYT, et al.
By Patricia McCarthy
August 27, 2019

 

— Excerpt
“Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee likes to say Trump’s “mental health is a national and global emergency.” If this is what passes for a Yale psychiatrist, then Yale is a university to avoid; it is pumping out moonbats who cannot possibly be taken seriously.”

 

 

 

 

The Federalist
What Happens When Psychiatric Abuse Begins To Affect Politics
By Stella Morabito
July 16, 2019

 

–BEGIN EXCERPT

 

Political abuse of psychiatry has a sordid history. Sadly, history seems to be repeating itself. A group of activist psychiatrists that dubs itself the “World Mental Health Coalition” is planning a July 23 town hall on Capitol Hill at which they intend to present a psychiatric “analysis” of President Trump based on the special counsel report.

 

At the behest of House Democrats, they will recommend Trump be removed from office. According to an interview with the lead activist in Raw Story, they will also unveil five questions they want members of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees to ask Mueller during his testimony rescheduled for the following day, July 24 (the group also rescheduled to make sure its event immediately precedes Mueller’s testimony.).

 

The principal leader of the scheme is Yale University psychiatrist Bandy Lee, the editor of a 2017 book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” She says they have a duty to warn the public that Trump is a menace to society and should be “contained” for an evaluation, and removed from office.

 

According to Lee, the July 16 meeting will be a prelude to another town hall on the subject. The members of Congress who appear most involved in hosting of a follow-up town hall are John Yarmuth (D–Ky.) and Jamie Raskin (D–Md.) Raskin has been a strong proponent of using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump as unfit to serve. The obvious intent of this stunt is to have some credentialed psychiatrists make a case for doing just that.

 

Resorting to the 25th Amendment is the latest in a long line of Democrats’ plan B to remove Trump from office. But there are a couple of obstacles here. One hurdle is the “Goldwater Rule” laid down in section seven of the American Psychiatric Association’s Principles of Medical Ethics, which states that psychiatrists should not make professional judgments on public officials without their consent or an in-person examination.

 

The rule took effect after the presidential election of 1964. During that campaign, the political magazine “Fact” polled all members of the APA on Republican candidate Barry Goldwater’s fitness for office. Many who responded weren’t shy about publicly saying they thought Goldwater was basically insane. The cover of the magazine’s October 1964 issue stated: “1,189 Psychiatrists Say Goldwater is Psychologically Unfit to be President!” (Goldwater later sued and won.)

 

Lee says the Goldwater Rule shouldn’t really apply to Trump because of a “duty to warn” about dangers that only informed experts like herself can diagnose. However, partly in response to Lee’s public activism as a psychiatrist, last year, the APA sent out a press release reaffirming its “unwavering” adherence to the Goldwater Rule and calling for “an end to ‘armchair’ psychiatry.”

 

Another problem for Lee is the backlash she has publicly received on Twitter from former APA president Jeffrey Lieberman, who stated that she was harming the profession of psychiatry. In response, Lee took down her Twitter page. You can find more on the story at psychsearch.net.

 

Give Us the Power to Determine Who Can Be Elected

 

What’s going on here is just the tip of a much deeper iceberg. Lee and her associates don’t simply want to evaluate only Trump. They believe psychiatrists should have carte blanche to do psychological evaluations on all candidates. For our own protection, you see.

 

Since last year, a confidential five-person working group, headed up by Lee (other members anonymous) has been devising a sort of tribunal that in the future would require “regular fitness-for-duty exams on presidential and vice presidential candidates, preferably as a requirement sometime before they take on the job, and even preferably before they run.” The probability of that happening in the foreseeable future is not high, though. According to the Washington Examiner:

 

‘Lee’s group realizes that Congress won’t enact such a requirement, which would include annual exam every year after winning the election, and instead is looking to demand that candidates voluntarily submit to being examined by the panel.

They plan to publish a proposal and make the case that the medical panel is needed to prevent mentally unfit people from entering high office.

“We would like to keep this entire process as voluntary and confidential as possible, but also in a democracy we believe the public has a right to know if a dangerous person is pursuing the presidency,’ Lee said.

 

I think it’s fair to say that most candidates, including Democrats, can see the risks of putting their careers at the mercy of a supposedly independent group of shrinks.

 

The greater danger here is that controversy has already been brewing among psychiatrists over whether to dispense with the Goldwater Rule. Even if the APA adheres to it, for now, the temptation to pass judgment on who can hold political power is obviously difficult for many of them to resist. (Lee, by the way, is not a member of the APA.) No doubt it is especially hard to resist if you feel you have the expertise that others lack, see a danger that others can’t, and that the fate of the entire world hangs on your shoulders.

 

–END EXCERPT

 

 

 

 

American Psychiatric Association
Press Release
APA Calls for End to ‘Armchair’ Psychiatry
Jan 09, 2018

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) reiterates its
continued and unwavering commitment to the ethical principle known as “The Goldwater
Rule.” We at the APA call for an end to psychiatrists providing professional opinions in the
media about public figures whom they have not examined, whether it be on cable news
appearances, books, or in social media. Armchair psychiatry or the use of psychiatry as a
political tool is the misuse of psychiatry and is unacceptable and unethical.

 

The ethical principle, in place since 1973, guides physician members of the APA to refrain
from publicly issuing professional medical opinions about individuals that they have not
personally evaluated in a professional setting or context. Doing otherwise undermines the
credibility and integrity of the profession and the physician-patient relationship. Although
APA’s ethical guidelines can only be enforced against APA members, we urge all psychiatrists,
regardless of membership, to abide by this guidance in respect of our patients and our profession.

 

A proper psychiatric evaluation requires more than a review of television appearances, tweets,
and public comments…

 

“The Goldwater Rule embodies these concepts and makes it unethical for a psychiatrist to render
a professional opinion to the media about a public figure unless the psychiatrist has examined the
person and has proper authorization to provide the statement,” said APA CEO and Medical Director
Saul Levin, M.D., M.P.A. “APA stands behind this rule.”

 

 

From: Zhuoyin Yang [mailto:ZYang@psych.org]
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2018 3:29 PM
To: ‘PsychSearch’ <records@psychsearch.net>
Subject: RE: Verify APA membership?</records@psychsearch.net>

 

Dr. Lee is not a member of APA and is not subject to APA’s ethics code.

 

 

Here you can find the tweets of Bandy Lee. She was humiliated by the former President of the American Psychiatric Association, Jeffrey A. Lieberman @DrJlieberman, ‏and had to hastily get an “assistant” to help her delete her Twitter account.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bandy Lee