Citing his "serious mental illness," multiple psychiatrists call for President Trump to be impeached

"Mental illness . . . renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of president"

Published May 31, 2019 11:13AM (EDT)

 (AP/Susan Walsh)
(AP/Susan Walsh)

This article originally appeared on Raw Story
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Three psychiatrists have written an editorial for USA Today calling on Congress to impeach President Donald Trump — and their call to remove the president has nothing to do with special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings.

The psychiatrists — John Gartner, a former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School; Dr. David Reiss, who has been practicing psychiatry for 30 years; and Dr. Steven Buser, a former Air Force psychiatrist — argue that the president’s “poor mental health” is a danger to the United States and should be used as a grounds to remove him from office.

“Many of us in the mental health community have been arguing for years that Trump should be removed because he is psychologically unfit,” they write. “We posted a professional petition online stating that ‘in our professional judgment . . . Donald Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of president of the United States.’”

They go on to document how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and even some members of his own administration have pondered removing Trump via the 25th amendment in which he’d be declared mentally unfit to perform his duties.

However, they think the most likely remedy at this point is for the House to start up impeachment hearings.

“Pelosi has thus far resisted calls for impeachment on the grounds that it would arouse the ire of Trump’s base going into the 2020 election,” they argue. “But she seems to ignore the opposite risk: Underreacting desensitizes us to the dangerous severity of Trump’s dysfunction, normalizing the abnormal.”


By Brad Reed

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