The World Mental Health Coalition Documents: With Introduction by Bandy Lee, MD, MDiv

About this book

In historically unprecedented ways, thousands of mental health professionals came forth to warn against the dangers of the current presidency, forming the World Mental Health Coalition. Because of mental impairments and proneness to violence, they argued, the public would be subject to dangers like no other time. Bandy X. Lee, editor of the New York Times bestseller THE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP, introduces this documentation of their efforts. Tracing their conferences, media appearances, letters, petitions, and even a full mental capacity evaluation and a “Prescription for Survival,” this volume brings together in one place, for the first time, a record of how mental health professionals endeavored to protect the public’s health and safety. Acting on a medical consensus but finding no support from their professional associations, they not only risked their careers and their own safety to try to alert the public, but also found themselves fighting against the powerful American Psychiatric Association. They allege that this psychiatric association, at the start of the Trump presidency, had modified “the Goldwater rule”—the purpose of which is to protect public health—to protect a political figure at the expense of public health. Now, over 150,000 deaths have occurred not only because of a novel virus but as a direct result of the president’s mental state. A vast majority of those deaths, they argue, were avoidable. Find out through this collection about the critical role of expertise in the public’s ability to protect itself and to make informed decisions. The World Mental Health Coalition is a story about the mobilization of professionals, their response to a societal medical need, and the public they serve. Bandy Lee, MD, MDiv, is a forensic psychiatrist, violence expert, and faculty member of Yale School of Medicine for 17 years, who taught at Yale Law School 15 of those years and consulted with the World Health Organization since 2002. The urgencies she saw with Donald Trump’s election led to her holding the “Duty to Warn” conference, editing The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, and becoming president of the World Mental Health Coalition. “I applaud all of the brave professionals who have spoken out about Trump’s mental illness. He is extremely dangerous, but I don’t know if people in our government will believe it until the unthinkable happens.” – Member of the Public, December 2019