DR. KENNETH PAUL ROSENBERG AND NORMAN ORNSTEIN | OPINION CONTRIBUTORS
One of us is a psychiatrist, the other a political scientist. We have watched the fiasco since the election with mounting trepidation, from two very different perspectives. But we have a common bond: For more than a decade, each of us has worked to advocate for people with serious mental illness to get treatment. We are coming together now to advocate for immediate intervention for our president.
Since President Donald Trump’s election, the psychiatric community has debated calling out his illness(es). The American Psychiatric Association says we should remain silent out of fear that we would violate the Goldwater Rule — an APA rule adopted largely to prevent the partisan misuse of psychiatric diagnoses to unduly influence an election. But it is clear what many psychiatrists know privately, and a few have said publicly. The threat to our democracy is too great to remain silent.
Not just tantrums or selfishness
It may be no surprise that Trump railed against a 2020 election process that promised a major increase in turnout through early voting and voting by mail. He and many Republicans have advocated for ways to suppress votes, and suggested repeatedly that when everybody votes, Republicans lose. Remember, Trump had said before the 2016 election that if he lost, it was rigged; if he won, it was fair.