President Donald Trump is demonstrating deteriorating mental health, Dr. Bandy Lee explained in a New York Daily News column published on Friday.
Lee works at the Yale School of Medicine as an expert in violence prevention and edited the 2017 book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.
"Two years after organizing a conference at Yale about how mental health professionals could warn the public ethically and effectively, our predictions have borne out to be true: Donald Trump in the office of the presidency has proven more dangerous than people suspected, has grown more dangerous by the day, and, without proper treatment, is becoming increasingly uncontainable," Lee wrote.
Lee was particularly alarmed by the commander-in-chief's Twitter feed, which the White House considers to be official presidential proclamations.
"Trump’s tweets are some of the best, unfiltered information on his mental state. They are reactions to real-life situations in real time, over an extended span of time," she explained. "Their growing frequency is an alarming sign, with an astonishing 52 tweets over 34 hours recently. Their content has also become more vitriolic."
She also worried about his "Make America Great Again" campaign rallies.
"They are events he insists on doing, often against advice, and the adulation of crowds seems to ease, at least temporarily, an insatiable emotional need," she noted. "These, too, have been increasingly more vicious in attacks against Hillary Clinton or John McCain, indicating that neither defeat nor death can satisfy the envy for what he may believe he could never have."
Trump's tweets and rallies were not the only red flags.
"Trump’s rhetoric has been growing more violent" and may "appear to indicate that the stress of the presidency is getting to him," she explained.
"Trump has been espousing and encouraging conspiracy theories," Lee noted. "These may be signs that he has a harder and harder time tolerating reality, as beliefs that 'the deep state' is out to get him or that 'invading migrants' are threatening the country may be easier concepts to cope with than his inner fears."
"Most markedly, he has of late been growing less and less coherent," Lee said, citing multiple recent episodes.
Lee suggested one of two courses of action.
"So the choice now seems clear: the president needs to submit to a proper, independent evaluation of fitness, or if not, he can always resign," Lee concluded.
Read the full column.
