Since the election and inauguration of Donald Trump, some mental health professionals have been promiscuously and very publically flouting the ethical guideline commonly known as the Goldwater Rule. The Goldwater Rule, named after former Republican Presidential nominee Sen. Barry Goldwater, prohibits psychiatrists specifically, but other physicians and mental health professionals by implication, from publically speculating about the mental health of public figures unless they have personally evaluated them and have permission to do so.
I previously objected to this trend in an article at American Thinker, but since that time the flagrant violation of the Goldwater Rule continues unabated. Here are just a few examples. Psychiatrist Carol Wolman questions Trump’s mental stability in an article at OpEd News where I also write. (I registered my objection in the comments.) Dr. Brenda Iannucci, who is an internist specializing in geriatric medicine and bills herself as a “cognitive function specialist,” tweeted her assessment that Trump is developing dementia. Her Twitter feed is basically a series of such tweets. This was picked up by the rabidly anti-Trump website Palmer Report and run under the blaring headline “Brain Specialist Doctor Believes Donald Trump’s Frontal Lobe is Failing.” (I attempted to voice my objection there as well, but my comment was not approved.) By far the most egregious example of this ongoing ethical circus was a “conference” of mental health professionals held at Yale for the very purpose of speculating about the President’s mental health. This isn’t violating the Goldwater Rule, this is throwing it on the ground and stomping on it.
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Thankfully, as an indication that some respect for traditional ethical boundaries still remains, the conference was not without some controversy, and the Yale Department of Psychiatry publically distanced themselves from the conference, and it was apparently rebranded as a town hall meeting. In a statement Yale claims that the participants were instructed not to violate the Goldwater Rule, an instruction which was obviously not followed based on quotes from some of the participants that were highlighted in multiple articles covering the event.
For example, Dr. John Gartner, the ringleader of the organized mental health effort to oust Trump who I discussed in my previous article, exclaimed “Worse than just being a liar or a narcissist, in addition he is paranoid, delusional and grandiose thinking…” Dr. James Gilligan opined, “I’ve worked with murderers and rapists. I can recognize dangerousness from a mile away. You don’t have to be an expert on dangerousness or spend fifty years studying it like I have in order to know how dangerous this man is.” Dr. Gilligan even went so far as to compare Trump to Adolf Hitler, so he violated the Goldwater Rule while simultaneously demonstrating Godwin’s Law.
In spite of the damning quotes, the emerging spin on the conference seems to be that the participants were there to discuss whether there are other ethical considerations that override the Goldwater Rule. The organizer of the conference, Yale’s Dr. Bandy Lee, offered this clarification in response to the coverage of the conference:
The panel at Yale School of Medicine abided by ‘the Goldwater rule.’ Eminent psychiatrists were invited to speak about whether there are other ethical rules that override it, as in ordinary practice. The organizer, Dr. Bandy Lee, agrees with the Goldwater rule, although she is troubled by its recent expansion (as of March 16, 2017) and the silencing of debate… (embedded link mine)
Whether “the panel” technically abided by the Goldwater Rule, I cannot say, but the spirit of the conference as a whole was a transparent violation of its intent.
The vague reference to “other ethical rules” is an attempt to invoke the so-called “duty to warn.” In fact, Dr. Gartner’s group is called Duty to Warn. The duty to warn is a reference to a legal case, Tarasoff vs. Regents of the University of California, that established that mental health practitioners have a duty to warn, later modified to a duty to protect, individuals threatened by a patient. Dr. Gartner even cites Tarasoff as justification for his crusade. Mere casual inspection, however, determines that Tarasoff and the professional duty to warn/protect is not germane here, and Dr. Gartner knows it. Trump is not his patient so he has no duty to warn his intended “victim” or “victims.” And who might these intended victims be anyway? Supporters of NAFTA, of which President Trump is an outspoken opponent? Citing Tarasoff as justification is blatant sophistry. Dr. Gartner is twisting Tarasoff and the duty to warn well past the breaking point to justify his flagrant violation of the Goldwater Rule and his advocacy that his peers do the same.
The problem with all this professional speculating about Trump’s mental health is that it is impossible to disentangle legitimate concerns from political ax grinding. It is safe to assume that the vast majority of mental health professionals who are declaring Trump mentally ill and unfit for office are people who would not otherwise be inclined to support him anyway. And it doesn’t help the credibility of the whole enterprise that mental health professionals in general have a reputation for being more liberal than average. So the entire charade just looks like politically motivated opposition to Trump couched in terms of alleged professional concerns about his fitness to govern. It is not his fitness to govern that really worries them. It is how he has said he will govern that really motivates them.
Dr. Wolman, who authored the OpEd News article, makes it very clear in rather overwrought language that she is opposed to Trump’s politics. Dr. Iannucci’s Twitter feed abundantly confirms her liberal leanings and her obsessive anti-Trump bias. She has a blog dedicate to the subject for crying out loud. She even appears to buy into the Trump/Russia #FakeNews conspiracy theory. I tweeted to Dr. Gartner to identify for me any participant in the Yale conference who would otherwise be sympathetic to Trump and his politics. He did not reply, but I would be very surprised if there was even one. Also, how many of these concerned professionals expressed similar concerns about the mental and physical state of Hillary Clinton which was a subject much in the news?
It is easy for unbiased eyes to see the problem here just as it was in 1964 when numerous psychiatrists opined in Fact magazine about the mental wellness of the eponymous Barry Goldwater which gave rise to the rule. It was wise to institute the Goldwater Rule in 1973 when it was first put in place, and we should continue to honor it today as it is obviously still much needed. The American Psychiatric Association should be commended for re-affirming it in March of this year. Attempting to justify its violation by citing Tarasoff is blatant game playing by professionals who are clearly not politically disinterested.
