> Trump is facing increasing questions in the media about his possible cognitive decline. But in all of this speculation, there is an important perspective largely missing from the conversation: Mental health professionals.
> 
> Why are mental health experts — individually and as a body — not condemning this man, whose acts, criminal behavior and hate speech all exhibit clear mental health disturbances?
> 
> There’s a reason.
> 
> During the 1964 presidential campaign, a magazine polled psychiatrists about Republican candidate Barry Goldwater’s mental fitness, and the majority pronounced him “unfit” for office.  Did that influence public opinion? You bet.
> 
> Therefore, in cautious response, the American Psychiatric Association passed the Goldwater Rule barring psychiatrists from diagnosing or offering professional opinions about the mental health of any person they have not personally examined. The Goldwater Rule makes sense to prevent wild speculation and smearing of those in the public eye. It puts the brakes on unscrupulous labeling, diagnosing and scandalizing.
> 
> But the rule backfires when psychiatrists are unable to communicate their professional knowledge when a presidential candidate poses a significant threat to American civilians.
> 
> When psychiatrists are muzzled and disempowered to speak out, it harms society’s best interests. 
> 
> Soon after Trump’s election in 2016, an international coalition of prominent psychiatrists formed the World Mental Health Coalition to address the issue of dangerous leadership and Trump’s “dangerous mental impairments.” In 2020, in response to Trump’s mismanagement of the coronavirus, the group released a “Prescription for Survival” requesting that Trump either sit for a mental health evaluation or resign, as he “is so gravely mentally incapacitated that he is an imminent danger to the nation.” They noted that Trump was making a global pandemic deadlier “not just through incompetence and ignorance, but through a dangerous detachment from reality, an inability to care for its citizens, a need to convey false information.”
> 
> This courageous group stepped up because they felt an ethical obligation to the public and a “duty to warn” based on their knowledge and expertise. That’s exactly how experts should interface with politics. However, they are a very small minority in a sea of caution.
> 
> What Americans need right now to make informed decisions at the ballot box is a new initiative from mental health professionals trained in analyzing human behavior, motivation, character and temperament.  Love it or hate it, Americans need to hear that Trump is not fit for office and just why his antisocial behavior poses a significant threat to democratic leadership.

Goldwater was someone who waged war on the moderate wing of his party, was dangerously unstable, and whom Martin Luther King Jr. compared to Hitler.  Indeed, he ignited far-right extremism and helped create the blueprint for modern-day MAGA (even with a Project 2025-esque manifesto of his own).

If you want to trace the steps back to where our modern-day far-right extremism all began, you’d have to start with Goldwater.

https://www.history.com/news/barry-goldwater-1964-campaign-right-wing-republican

And, now we’ve come full circle. 

A rule based upon Goldwater has unloosed another Goldwater. 

Full article: https://archive.is/WYdBV