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Trump niece's claim about president's mental health backed by Yale psychiatrist

EPA
EPA

A Yale psychiatrist has supported Mary Trump’s claims that the president – her uncle – may have severe mental health issues and is not fit to lead the US.

Dr Trump, a clinical psychologist, claimed she believes her uncle may suffer from a number of mental issues in her new book: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.

“I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist – he meets all nine criteria as outlined in the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders,” she writes in the book.

Dr Trump also suggests that Mr Trump "meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder" and “may also meet some of the criteria for dependent personality disorder".

Bandy X Lee, a Yale psychiatrist who has fiercely campaigned to warn people about the president's mental "problems" since the 2016 election, said on Thursday that she was “delighted” that Dr Trump had drawn the same conclusions about the president's mental health in an interview with Salon

“Any honest and competent mental health professional has come to the same conclusion,” she said.

The psychiatrist has long worked to raise awareness of what she sees as "a dangerous mental condition, regardless of diagnosis", that makes Mr Trump unfit to occupy the Oval Office.

On Thursday she claimed the reason "lawmakers have been denying claims about the president's mental health for years" is indicative of the “poor state of mental health in our society”.

“We would rather resort to all manner of extreme conspiracy theories, such as QAnon, to justify the unjustifiable — the continuation of a presidency that should never have been for a day — and to deny the undeniable — that a president who is supposed to protect us is killing us," she told the website.

Dr Lee is also president of the World Mental Health Coalition, which this year published the “Prescription for Survival” a document that urges actions that would revoke the president's power including the invocation of the 25th Amendment or a new urgent impeachment, on the ground of his mental "impairments".

Speaking of the president’s recent boasting of how he "aced" a cognitive test, Dr Lee said that "he is likely frantically trying to convince himself that he is mentally fit".

She goes on to suggest that the president's attacks on Joe Biden, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee for November's election, are all just "projection".

“Projection is a way of disowning what you cannot tolerate in yourself by attaching it to others, and since his case is severe, what he says almost has nothing to do with Mr Biden but is a very accurate portrayal of himself," she says.

Many of the long-standing claims made by Dr Lee and other critics against Mr Trump's mental state have often drawn judgment from some in the psychiatric establishment.

Some say they violate the American Psychiatric Association’s “Goldwater rule”, which states psychiatrists are not to give professional opinions on people they have not personally examined.

Dr Lee has previously argued that the rule should not apply if doctors believe the President presents a risk to others and has complained that psychiatrists seeking to warn of what she has called Mr Trump’s “dangerousness” are constrained by the rule.

However, Dr Trump stops short of any attempt to nail down the president's psychological problems without full-on clinical assessment in her own book, which was published this month.

His pathologies and behaviours, she writes, are so bizarre that “coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuro-physical tests that he’ll never sit for”.

In response to Dr Trump's claims about the president's mental health, counsellor to the president Kellyanne Conway said: “He's not her patient, he's her uncle.”

“As for books generally, obviously they're not fact-checked, nobody's under oath. I know there's always this rush to slap credibility on whoever's getting the president that day,” Ms Conway said.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany also said that the book was full of “falsehoods”.

“It's ridiculous, absurd allegations that have absolutely no bearing in truth,” Ms McEnany previously said.

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