Will We Overtake Mental Pathology, before It Overtakes Us?
Dr. Bandy X. Lee
I was forwarded this astute video, which I quote in full:
MAGA cult isn’t a political movement; it’s a mental illness.
There is a psychological reason for that. Forensic psychiatrist [Bandy] Lee at
Yale School of Medicine spent years studying what happens when a
psychologically dangerous leader gains mass influence.
She found that leaders’ mental pathology does not stay confined to the leader. It spreads to his followers through emotional bonds, through rallies, through constant exposure. It induces delusions, paranoia, and a propensity for violence in people who were previously psychologically healthy.
Psychiatrists call this, folie à millions, or the madness
of millions. Sixty-two courts ruled the 2020 election was not stolen. Trump’s
own attorney general said there was no fraud. His own Department of Justice
confirmed it and they still believe the election was stolen. This is not a
political opinion. This is an induced delusion. This is why his followers
stormed the Capitol and tried to commit an insurrection.
This is why they excused federal agents for killing Americans in the streets. This is why nothing that happens will ever change their minds.
Lee found that the treatment is the same as any contagion: remove
the exposure. The symptoms begin to fade when the source is gone, which is
exactly why Trump cannot stop holding rallies. He knows what happens when the
exposure stops. The delusion starts to break. These people are not true
believers. They are addicted to their delusion. The delusion feels better than
their real lives do, and they will try to burn everything down before they give
up that delusion.
Now that we understand this, what shall we do about it?
The above Lawrence O’Donnell Show featured two of my books, and here I quote O’Donnell:
On the 132nd day of his war, Donald Trump returned from the
NATO summit in Turkey proclaiming himself a peacemaker: “… I would say I should
have won that award more than anybody that ever received the Nobel Peace Prize
because nobody settled wars. I settled eight of them, because of a certain type
of personality….”
He does have a certain type of personality. He is right
about that. It is the subject of the book, The
Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts
Assess a President, published in 2017, which in its latest edition is
now titled, The
Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 50 Psychiatrists and Mental Health
Experts Warn Anew. The mental health experts … whose opinions appear in
those books generally agree … that Donald Trump’s personality could [not] in
any way help him settle wars….
While Donald Trump was proclaiming himself to be a great
peacemaker to the reporters on his plane, the war he started was still raging
in Iran, being no closer to settlement than it was on the first day of Donald
Trump’s war. The New York Times reports: “The US military said
overnight that it had struck more than 170 targets in Iran. During the previous
48 hours, a significant uptick”….
Iran also said it had fired at U.S. targets in the Gulf
nations of Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, [and threatened] to expand its attacks to
other American military facilities in the region….
Donald Trump has said they want to make a deal so
badly—those exact words—almost every day of his now 132 days of war. He has
been lying every single time he has said that. And at the same time, Iran has
demonstrated two things with absolute consistency:… One, Iran will not
surrender. And two, Iran does not want to make a deal so badly…. And Donald
Trump has shown himself to be desperate to make a deal, which is why he agreed
to a memo of understanding with Iran, which was full of concessions, immediate
concessions to Iran with no concessions to the United States by Iran. That memo
of understanding called for a sixty-day ceasefire that has been violated
repeatedly….
And so when asked what he is going to do next in his war in
effect, he said: “I don’t know.”
Now that we know the Emperor has no clothes, will we
mobilize the courage to confront him? Only then will we see how quickly he can
crumble.
It has taken nearly a decade for public
discourse to begin speaking our language, with the same intensity and
urgency we tried to convey, recognizing that what we are dealing with is a
mental health pandemic—not exceptional talent for mobilizing crowds, a unique
personality that works, or political “genius”. Mental pathology, by its very
nature, does not work. It destroys self-awareness, corrodes
relationships, and ultimately consumes the very systems upon which it feeds.
This unique feature of mental pathology is what mental health experts have been
trying to warn against.
Some may have believed that they
could harness Donald Trump’s pathology for their own ends:
self-enrichment, advancement to positions they could not have dreamed of,
and—yes—extreme policies such as Project 2025. Observing how he “succeeds”
where propaganda and disinformation fall short, they may have considered
symptom contagion an expedient way to detach large populations from
reality, leading them to embrace not only policies that impoverish them,
but even those that threaten their survival. But this catastrophic error in
belief arises from ignorance.
Donald Trump became an instrument for oligarchs,
authoritarians, and those who profit from social disintegration. Yet,
they failed to consider that—like all pathology—he is a “weapon” that will
turn against them. Like every disease left unchecked, it eventually turns
upon its host. Those who imagined they could wield those forces now find
themselves subject to them—and we are now entering end times.
He has destroyed our last chance to restrict global warming
to manageable levels, has vastly accelerated nuclear dangers, has decimated the
fragile existing World Order that took generations to build, and he has now
ignited World War III and endless wars to come…. Structural reforms are
indispensable and would solve many problems, but we will not get anywhere
as long as a mental health pandemic is raging; we must contain the
emergency first.
No physician would substitute rehabilitation for removal of
the pathogen. Lunatics have taken over the asylum, and they must be
contained before they inflict far greater harm, through whatever lawful
mechanisms are available: there is hospitalization, incarceration, and
removal from office. The people must demand no less. The last time there was
unacceptable madness in leadership, there was a revolution.
Announcement:
Dr. Bandy X. Lee will hold her next “emergency
psychiatric meeting”—an ongoing emergency makes it more emergent, not less—on
Friday, July 17, 2026, at 6 p.m. EDT / 3 p.m. PDT. She will also hold her next
planning meeting for Survival University on Monday, July 27, 2026, at 6 p.m.
EDT / 3 p.m. PDT. Paid subscribers will receive a link an hour before meeting
times.
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