Goldwater rule
", American Psychological Association President Susan H. McDaniel published a letter in The New York Times in which she offered her opinion and interpretation of the current Ethics Code: Similar to the psychiatrists' Goldwater Rule, our code of ethics exhorts psychologists to "take precautions" that any statements they make to the media "are based on their professional knowledge, training or experience in accord with appropriate psychological literature and practice" and "do not indicate that a professional relationship has been established" with people in the public eye, including political candidates.
[11][12]The American Medical Association, which initially pressured the American Psychiatric Association to include the Goldwater rule after actively supporting Barry Goldwater in 1964,[13] wrote new guidelines into the AMA Code of Medical Ethics in the fall of 2017, stating that physicians should refrain "from making clinical diagnoses about individuals (e.g., public officials, celebrities, persons in the news) they have not had the opportunity to personally examine.
"[14][15] In 2016 and 2017, a number of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists faced criticism for violating the Goldwater rule, as they claimed that Donald Trump displayed "an assortment of personality problems, including grandiosity, a lack of empathy, and 'malignant narcissism'", and that he has a "dangerous mental illness", despite having never examined him.
"[22] On December 5, 2019, a group of mental health professionals led by Lee, George Washington University professor John Zinner, and former CIA profiler Jerrold Post publicly urged the House Judiciary Committee to consider Donald Trump's "dangerous" mental state that was ostensibly arising from his "brittle sense of self-worth" as part of the Congressional impeachment ongoing process.
"[25][26] In July 2017, the website Stat published an article by Sharon Begley, labeled "exclusive" and titled "Psychiatry Group Tells Members They Can Defy 'Goldwater Rule' and Comment on Trump's Mental Health".
The article, with a photograph of Barry Goldwater as the headline image, stated "A leading psychiatry group has told its members they should not feel bound by a longstanding rule against commenting publicly on the mental state of public figures", first sourcing the statement to the July 6 American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) letter, but also claiming that it "represents the first significant crack in the profession's decades-old united front aimed at preventing experts from discussing the psychiatric aspects of politicians' behavior".
"[31] In September 2017, psychiatrist Jeffrey A. Lieberman published an article extensively speculating on diagnoses for Donald Trump despite claiming to adhere to the Goldwater rule in the beginning paragraph.
