Doctors Can Now Call Trump Insane Without Breaking Ethics Rules -
In an unprecedented move, executives of American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) informed its 3,500 members through an email that they were permitted to defy what is known as the “Goldwater Rule” and can now comment on President Donald Trump’s mental state, STAT News reports.
The rule, which first appeared in the American Psychiatry Association’s Principles of Medical Ethics in 1973 and has been in effect since, declared it unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional psychiatric opinion on a public figure without a consensual in-person examination. The issue first emerged in 1964, when Fact Magazine published a piece where some polled psychiatrists declared that then-presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was mentally unfit to be president. Goldwater successfully sued for libel, and thus the “Goldwater Rule” was born.
The rule has been followed by psychiatrists and psychologists alike for decades. The APsaA’s July 6 email, however, marks a stark contrast to its previous position on examining public figures, which was sent on the basis of the “belief in the value of psychoanalytic knowledge in explaining human behavior,” past association president Dr. Prudence Gourguechon told STAT.
“We don’t want to prohibit our members from using their knowledge responsibly.” Dr. Gourguechon said that t
his responsibility has become more pressing today, “since Trump’s behavior is so different from anything we’ve seen before” in a president. This means that the APsaA’s psychiatrists now have the ability to declare the president “insane”, “paranoid”, or “schizophrenic” without being bound by the ethics rule.
http://lawnewz.com/important/doctors-can-now-call-trump-insane-without-breaking-ethics-rules-groups-says/
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