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Undated: Since the early days of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, his physical and mental health have been a subject of public debate. Trump was seventy years old when he took office, surpassing Ronald Reagan as the oldest person to assume the presidency.[1] Comments on his age, weight and lifestyle have raised questions about his physical health. In addition, numerous public figures, media sources, and mental health professionals have speculated that Donald Trump may have mental health challenges, ranging from narcissistic personality disorder to some form of dementia. Trump and his supporters have denied these claims, and have contested the authority and motives of persons making such claims. Additionally, both the American Psychiatric Association and Alzheimer's Society have requested that people don't armchair diagnose Trump, or diagnose him with any disorder without being his doctor as per the Goldwater rule.[2][3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_of_Donald_Trump
-- 2017 --
February 16: Trump's mental health debate: What is it about? ...
It seems an incredible question to ask of a man who ran a multi-billion-dollar business and vanquished seasoned political opponents on his way to highest office in the US. But experts are debating the mental health of the US president.
The discussion of Donald Trump's mental health has come to the fore following an open letter from dozens of professionals who say his "grave emotional instability" makes him unfit for the presidency.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38991171
February 17: The psychiatrist who wrote the guide to personality disorders [Allen Frances] says diagnosing Trump is “bullshit” ...
“Everyone has a personality,” Frances says. “It’s not wrong to have a personality; it’s not mentally ill to have a personality. It’s only a disorder when it causes extreme distress, suffering, and impairment.”
Trump’s willingness to lie and endless self-promotion are traits that have, so far, worked out largely to his advantage.
But people who have a true narcissistic personality disorder, Frances explains, experience a crash of some sort, even if they can’t see it for themselves. They’ll lose their jobs, their spouses and children will abandon them, and their “bubble of grandiosity [will] burst,” he says. “They feel absolutely miserable, can’t function, can’t face the world.”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/10/14551890/trump-mental-health-narcissistic-personality
April 5: Trump’s Mental Health: Is Pathological Narcissism the Key to Trump’s Behavior?
Diagnosing the president was off-limits to experts – until a textbook case entered the White House
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trumps-mental-health-is-pathological-narcissism-the-key-to-trumps-behavior-126354/
July 26: You might expect partisan politicians to question the sanity of a president, but now there's an unusual and growing public debate among those qualified to make the assessment -- psychiatrists and other mental health experts -- as to whether they should be allowed to publicly raise those questions.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/26/health/mental-health-association-debate-trump/index.html
August 2: President Trump is not levelheaded, say 71 - 26 percent of voters, his worst score on that character trait.
https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2478
August 23: "We're smart people," the president said to his supporters at the Phoenix Convention Center. "These are truly dishonest people. And not all of them. Not all of them. You have some very good reporters. You have some very fair journalists. But for the most part, honestly, these are really, really dishonest people, and they're bad people. And I really think they don't like our country. I really believe that. And I don't believe they're going to change, and that's why I do this. If they would change, I would never say it."
"These are sick people," Trump said of those in the media. "You know the thing I don't understand? You would think -- you would think they'd want to make our country great again, and I honestly believe they don't. I honestly believe it."
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/08/23/trump_some_reporters_dont_like_our_country_dont_want_to_make_america_great_again.html
September 29: Although its Goldwater rule prohibits APA [American Psychiatric Association] members from commenting on the mental characteristics and possible mental disorders of public figures, psychiatrists have an even higher duty, some argue: a duty to warn, called the Tarasoff doctrine.
https://www.statnews.com/2017/09/29/trump-mental-health-book/
November 30: A former ghostwriter for President Donald Trump [Tony Schwartz] claimed White House staffers are worried about the billionaire Republican’s mental state and said Americans need to understand Trump is “losing his grip” on reality.
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-mental-state-white-house-staff-726948
-- 2018 --
January 4: The President Is Mentally Unwell — and Everyone Around Him Knows It
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/trump-is-mentally-unwell-and-everyone-around-him-knows-it.html
January 4: On Wednesday ... medical professionals released a statement following Trump’s late night tweet baiting Kim Jong Un into a potential nuclear war. “We write as mental health professionals who have been deeply concerned about Donald Trump’s psychological aberrations,” the statement read.
“We believe that he is now further unraveling in ways that contribute to his belligerent nuclear threats. … We urge that those around him, and our elected representatives in general, take urgent steps to restrain his behavior and head off the potential nuclear catastrophe that endangers not only Korea and the United States but all of humankind.” The statement, released on behalf of the National Coalition of Concerned Mental Health Experts, was signed by more than 100 medical professionals.
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-mental-health-psychiatric-assesmment-yale-university-professor/
January 6: Trump's mental health and why people are discussing it
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42580762
January 9: Trump expands mental health benefits to decrease suicide rates among new veterans
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/01/09/trump-expands-mental-health-benefits-decrease-suicide-rates-among-new-veterans/1016271001/
January 12: The Health 202: Mental-health professionals can't agree on evaluating Trump's psyche
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2018/01/12/the-health-202-mental-health-professionals-can-t-agree-on-evaluating-trump-s-psyche/5a577c0e30fb0469e8840077/?utm_term=.7361d15ed4e4
January 13: White House physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson ... received an urgent letter from dozens of doctors and health professionals Thursday urging him to perform basic mental health tests on the President.
... there is some "increasing concern" that the President may be struggling with some mental health challenges and they recommend the President's doctor screen Trump for dementia.
Problems these experts say they have observed include rambling speech; episodes of slurred speech; failure to recognize old friends; frequent repetition of the same concepts; decreased fine motor coordination; difficulties reading, listening and comprehending; suspect judgment, planning, problem solving and impulse control; and markedly declining vocabulary in recent years, with overreliance on superlatives, according to the letter.
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/13/health/trump-mental-health-exam/index.html
January 14: Concerns About Reagan’s Mental Health Were Handled Very Differently Than Concerns About Trump’s
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/how-reagans-mental-health-concerns-were-handled.html
January 17: What Donald Trump's Mental Health Exam Doesn't Tell Us ... The White House physician reported Tuesday that President Trump is in “excellent” overall health based on a four-hour examination. At Trump’s request, said Dr. Ronny Jackson, this included a common test of cognitive ability on which the President reportedly scored a perfect 30 out of 30.
“Just because a person gets a 30 out of 30 doesn’t mean you wouldn’t pick up even very significant impairments in further testing,” he said. “A more comprehensive neurological exam would be required to really tease that out.”
http://time.com/5106569/donald-trump-mental-health-exam/
February 16: Budget undercuts Trump's call for a focus on mental health and school safety in response to Florida shootings.
https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2018-02-16/budget-undercuts-trump-focus-on-mental-health-school-safety
June 9: CNBC correspondent muses on Trump's mental health: 'He did not look well to me'
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/cnbc-correspondent-muses-on-trumps-mental-health-he-did-not-look-well-to-me
July 30: What's Going On With Donald Trump's Mental State? No Principles, Just Gusts of Wind
Trump's lies and reversals are not due to mental illness but because he reacts to people and situations in the moment, with no thought of future or past.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/07/30/whats-going-donald-trumps-mental-state-no-principles-just-gusts-wind
August 3: Former White House Aide Claims Trump Is Suffering Obvious “Mental Decline”
Trump’s original apprentice joins a chorus of alarmed doctors and Washingtonians in declaring the president unfit for office.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/omarosa-trump-suffering-mental-decline
September 7: Trump Family Friend Contacted Yale Psychiatrist With Concerns About President's Mental Health
Dr. Bandy Lee, assistant clinical professor in law and psychiatry and violence expert at the Yale School of Medicine, published a book in 2017 titled The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, featuring essays by others in her field.
Lee told Salon that two Trump administration officials approached her after the book was published to express their concern about the president’s mental health, saying he was “scaring” them because he was “unraveling.”
She continued, “They were definitely calling from within the White House, which I confirmed by calling back their number. However, I did not ask about their rank. There was no reason for me to doubt they were high-ranking enough to have regular access to the president.”
Lee also said that a “person [who] was a friend of his entire family, since his childhood” had also been in touch with her at the same time in October 2017, as people in the White House were “stating concern about the president (this was an observation from afar).”
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-mental-health-yale-psychologist-1111778
September 26: Thousands of Mental Health Professionals Agree Trump is Dangerous
“Just as suspicion of crime should lead to an investigation, the severity of impairment that we see should lead to an evaluation, preferably with the president’s consent.”
https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/pa8k9k/thousands-of-mental-health-professionals-agree-trump-is-dangerous
November 12: What Happens When the Walls Finally Close in on Trump?
Mental health experts say his narcissism could make him capable of just about anything
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/donald-trump-mental-health-754139/
November 16: The Trump administration is loosening restrictions to allow states to better treat patients with serious mental illnesses.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar wants states to apply for waivers to allow Medicaid to pay for long term mental health at inpatient facilities. The waivers have previously been used to provide more flexibility on substance use disorders.
“Different forms of treatment work for different patients, but the decades-old restriction on Medicaid reimbursement for inpatient treatment at institutions for mental diseases, or IMDs, has been a significant barrier,” Azar said Tuesday during a speech to the National Association of Medicaid Directors.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/416451-trump-administration-loosens-restrictions-on-mental-health-treatment
December 13: John Kelly ‘Relieved To Be Leaving’ White House: CNN
Kelly reportedly said being chief of staff was the “worst job” he’s ever had.
In one meeting Kelly allegedly called Trump “an idiot” and said it was “pointless to try to convince him of anything.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/john-kelly-relieved-out-white-house_us_5c12e906e4b0860b8b5ca838
-- 2019 --
January 8: Pence Says Trump Thought Presidents on TV Were Talking Privately to Him
NBC’s Hallie Jackson asked Vice-President Mike Pence to name the former presidents who had secretly told Trump to build the wall:
“I know the president has said that that was his impression from previous presidents, previous administrations,” replied Pence. “I know I’ve seen clips of previous presidents talking about the importance of border security.”
So rather than concede that Trump made up these private conversations, Pence is saying Trump saw them say it on television, and imagined they had told him this face-to-face. Is that actually better?
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/pence-trump-thought-presidents-on-tv-talking-privately-to-him.html
March 19: Conservatives Issue a Clarion Call on Trump’s Mental Health
Given what we know about Donald Trump and the presidency, I have been suggesting for a long time that his mental status will not get any better and can only get worse. As that prediction materializes, the president’s behavior has triggered several conservatives to issue warnings about his deteriorating mental health.
The most comprehensive comes from Peter Wehner, who served under three Republican presidents and is now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank. Reacting to some of Trump’s more inflammatory tweets over the weekend, Wehner refers to the president as “a damaged soul with a disordered personality.”
{It doesn’t take a person with an advanced degree in psychology to see Trump’s narcissism and lack of empathy, his vindictiveness and pathological lying, his impulsivity and callousness, his inability to be guided by norms, or his shamelessness and dehumanization of those who do not abide his wishes. His condition is getting worse, not better—and there are now fewer people in the administration able to contain the president and act as a check on his worst impulses…
Whether the worst scenarios come to pass or not is right now unknowable. But what we do know is that the president is a person who seems to draw energy and purpose from maliciousness and transgressive acts, from creating enmity among people of different races, religions, and backgrounds, and from attacking the weak, the honorable, and even the dead.
Donald Trump is not well, and as long as he is president, our nation is not safe.}
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/03/19/conservatives-issue-a-clarion-call-on-trumps-mental-health/
May 26: The President of the United States is erratic, illiterate, and doesn’t want to know what he doesn’t know. The President has alienated former allies, befriended or courted murderous dictators, and has repeatedly brought the country to the brink of nuclear confrontation. The President lies constantly, knows that he is lying, and demands that Administration officials lie for him, and often they do. The President has waged war on the institutions of government, overseeing the gutting of the State Department and the destruction of other federal agencies by their own leaders, and effectively shut off media access to the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House. The President has acted to thwart oversight of the Administration by other branches of government. The President has never made a secret of despising the government itself: he has called it a “swamp” and gleefully shut it down for thirty-five days, during a temper tantrum. The President has not only failed to divest himself of his businesses but has installed his children in and near the White House, openly using his office for personal financial gain. The President has debased political culture and language, using his bully pulpit to spew lies, hate, and personal insults
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-nancy-pelosis-tactics-affirm-the-trumpian-style-of-politics
-- 2020 --
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