Doctors Want Trump to Undergo an Emergency Mental Health Evaluation. Here's How that Would Work.

President Donald Trump should undergo a psychiatric examination to determine if he's fit to be president, according to a growing campaign from psychiatrists.
"It needs to happen as soon as possible," Yale forensic psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee recently told Newsweek.
Trump's annual medical exam is scheduled for Friday and is not expected to include a mental health exam. But Lee and hundreds of other mental health experts with the National Coalition of Concerned Mental Health Experts issued a statement last week calling for an evaluation into Trump's psychological health. Lee also met with several members of Congress last month to discuss Trump's mental status and will attend a town hall with Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland, who has introduced a bill that would create a commission to evaluate the president's mental fitness. However, checking a person's mental stability is neither as simple nor as straightforward as it might sound.
Psychiatrists do have ways to see if someone is fit to make decisions—whether that choice is declining medical treatment or launching a nuclear attack on a foreign country. One tool in a psychiatrist's kit is a capacity exam, which is often used to evaluate a person's ability to make decisions around one particular task like their ability to consent to medical treatment or manage their own bank accounts. The more illuminating assessment in Trump's case might be what's called a "fitness for duty" exam.
"Fitness for duty" exams specifically evaluate someone's psychological capacity to perform a job. These can happen either prospectively—before someone starts a job—or after someone has already been hired. There are two basic parts to a fitness for duty exam: A general psychiatric evaluation and a more tailored assessment of how a person's psychological state might be affecting their ability to do their job.

The first part is simple enough; these evaluations are similar to what psychiatrists do for any patient who walks into their office. But getting at the truth of the second part is more involved.

The Wrap

Vox Editor Calls for Mental Evaluation of President Trump ‘By Force If Necessary’

Jon Levine,The Wrap Mon, Jan 8 9:15 AM CST

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Vox Editor Calls for Mental Evaluation of President Trump ‘By Force If Necessary’

Vox Science and Health Editor Eliza Barclay on Saturday floated the idea that President Donald Trump should undergo a medical evaluation of his mental capacity “by force if necessary.”
“There is a growing call from a group of psychiatrists — the best medical experts at interpreting aberrant human behavior — for exactly this: an emergency evaluation of the president’s mental capacity, by force if necessary,” she wrote

A Vox spokesperson did not immediately respond to request for clarification about what this “force” might look like.

The broader piece by Barclay focused on one psychiatrist, Bandy Lee, an assistant professor in forensic psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine.
Last October, Lee published a whole book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” which called the president’s mental fitness into question.

Lee, who has taken heat from other psychiatric professionals for speculating about Trump’s mental health without having done her own examination, offered Barclay a bit of explanation about what “forcing” Trump into an evaluation might look like.