Bandy X. Lee

Bandy Xenobia Lee (born 1970) is an American psychiatrist with Yale University, and a specialist in violence prevention programs in prisons and in the community who initiated reforms at New York's Rikers Island prison. Her scholarly work includes the writing of a comprehensive textbook on violence.[1]

Bandy Lee
Born1970 (age 49–50)
New York City, New York, U.S.
CitizenshipAmerican
EducationYale University School of Medicine, Yale Divinity School
OccupationPsychiatrist
Medical career
InstitutionsYale School of Medicine
Sub-specialtiesViolence prevention
Notable works

In 2017, Lee attracted attention for organizing a conference at Yale on professional ethics surrounding the mental health of Donald Trump. She withheld her views at the conference[2] but later prominently criticized the American Psychiatric Association for changing an ethical guideline called the Goldwater rule with the Trump presidency.[3] In March 2017, the association had expanded the rule to restrict not just diagnosis but any comment on the mental health of public figures absent a personal examination, misleadingly calling it a "reaffirmation." This change alarmed Lee and her colleagues[4] enough to lead to her conference[5] and, later, to co-authoring The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book of essays that warned against the dangers of Trump's mental instability.

Early life and education

Bandy Lee was born in 1970 and raised in the Bronx, New York. She is of Korean descent. Her mother was Inmyung Lee and her grandfather was Geun-Young Lee, a South Korean physician who she says inspired her with a belief that practicing medicine also involves social responsibility. As a teenager she volunteered in Harlem as a tutor for homeless African-American children.[6]

Lee received her MD from the Yale University School of Medicine in 1994 and a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School in 1995.[7] Lee interned at the Bellevue Hospital Center in New York and was chief resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Career

Lee studied the anthropology of violence in East Africa as a fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health[8] and has co-authored academic papers on Côte d'Ivoire, Tanzania, and Rwanda. She is a specialist in violence prevention programmes in prisons and in the community[7] and worked for several years in maximum security prisons in the United States[6] where she was instrumental in initiating reforms at New York's Rikers Island jail complex.[7] Since then, she has consulted with five different U.S. states on prison reform.[7] She was director of research for the Center for the Study of Violence and with Kaveh Khoshnood founded Yale University's Violence and Health Study Group.[8] She heads a project group of the Violence Prevention Alliance for the World Health Organization[7] and wrote the textbook, Violence: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Causes, Consequences, and Cures.[1]

Comments on Donald Trump
Further information: Goldwater rule

In April 2017 Lee hosted a meeting at Yale University medical school to discuss the ethics of speaking about the mental health of Donald Trump.[9] The assembled, prominent psychiatrists decided they had a "duty to warn."[10] Lee then stated in an interview with Salon in May 2017 that Trump suffers from mental health issues that amount to a "state of emergency" and that "our survival as a species may be at stake."[11][12] She also discussed her political views, linking what she sees as increasing inequality in the United States to a deterioration in collective mental health.[12] Later in 2017 she was the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book of essays alleging that Trump suffers from psychological problems that make him dangerous.[13] After the book's publication, she reported receiving thousands of threatening messages by letter, phone and on social media that included death threats.[6]

In December 2017 she met 12 members of the United States Congress (11 Democrats, 1 Republican) to give them her opinion on the mental health of Trump in which she reportedly argued that he was "unraveling".[6] In a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, Jeffrey Lieberman, past president of the APA, argued that while he accepted that Lee and her co-authors were acting in good faith and out of a sense of moral obligation, they were guilty of a "misguided and dangerous morality".[14] Lieberman himself, however, was later reported to have diagnosed Trump, the very act he accused Lee and colleagues of committing.[15]

Lee's colleagues argued that the Goldwater Rule has become a "gag rule."[16] Lee emphasized that, when meeting with lawmakers, she was adhering to the American Psychiatric Association's guideline that precedes the Goldwater rule and urges psychiatrists "to serve society by advising and consulting with the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of the government”.[17] In an interview she also said, "whenever the Goldwater rule is mentioned, we should also refer to the Declaration of Geneva, established by the World Medical Association 25 years earlier, which mandates physicians to speak up if there are humanitarian reasons to do so. This Declaration was created in response to the experience of Nazism."[18]

Selected publications
  • "Detecting depressive disorder with a 19-item local instrument in Tanzania." International Journal of Social Psychiatry, Vol. 54 (2008), pp. 21–33. (With S.F. Kaaya, J.K. Mbwambo, M.C. Smith-Fawzi, & M.T. Leshabari)
  • "Preventing gender-based violence engendered by conflict: The case of Côte d’Ivoire." Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 146 (2015), pp. 341–347. (With M. Blay-Tofey)
  • "A reflection on the madness in prisons", Stanford Law and Policy Review, Vol. 26 (2015), pp. 253–268. (With M. Prabhu)
  • "Health system re-design following sexual violence during the genocide in Rwanda." International Journal of Public Health, Vol. 61 (2016), pp. 959–960. (With G. Uwizeye & T. Kroll)
  • "Transforming our world: Implementing the 2030 agenda through sustainable development goal indicators." Journal of Public Health Policy, Vol. 37 (2016), pp. 13–31. (With F. Kjaerulf, S. Turner, L. Cohen, P.D. Donnelly, R. Muggah, R. Davis et al.)
  • "Global research priorities for interpersonal violence prevention: A modified Delphi study." Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Vol. 95 (2017), pp. 36–48. (With C.R. Mikton, M. Tanaka, M. Tomlinson, D.L. Streiner, L. Tonmyr, J. Fisher et al.)
  • The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. Thomas Dunne Books, 2017. (Editor) ISBN 978-1250179456
  • Violent States and Creative States: From the Global to the Individual. Vol. 1: Structural Violence and Creative Structures. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2018. (With J. Adlam & T. Kluttig) ISBN 978-1785925641
  • Violent States and Creative States: From the Global to the Individual. Vol. 2: Human Violence and Creative Humanity. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2018. (With J. Adlam & T. Kluttig) ISBN 978-1785925658
  • Violence: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Causes, Consequences, and Cures. Wiley-Blackwell, 2019. ISBN 978-1119240693
  • The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. Thomas Dunne Books, 2019. (Editor) ISBN 978-1250212863
  • "Government political structure and gender differences in violent death: A longitudinal analysis of forty-three countries, 1960–2008." Aggression and Violent Behavior, Vol. 46 (2019), pp. 174–179. (With M. Blay-Tofey, P. Marotta, K.K. Schuder & J. Gilligan)
  • "Government political structure and violent death rates: A longitudinal analysis of forty-three countries, 1960–2008." Aggression and Violent Behavior, Vol. 47 (2019), pp. 262–267. (With P. Marotta, M. Blay-Tofey, K.K. Schuder, C.H. Kim, G. Lee & J. Gilligan)

See also

References
  1. Lee, Bandy X. (2019-02-19). "Violence: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Causes, Consequences, and Cures". Wiley.com.
  2. "Transcript of the Duty to Warn Conference" (PDF).
  3. Lee, Bandy X. "Mental health experts see Trump is dangerous, but our professional gatekeepers protect him". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2020-01-30.
  4. "Mental Health Experts Claim Their Right to Speak". Psychology Today. Retrieved 2020-02-02.
  5. "Psychiatrist issues urgent warning over Trump's mental health". The Independent. 2017-04-25. Retrieved 2020-02-02.
  6. Are Donald Trump’s test results fake news? Rhys Blakely, The Times, 18 January 2018. Retrieved 21 January 2018. (subscription required)
  7. Bandy X. Lee, MD, MDiv. Archived 2018-01-18 at the Wayback Machine Yale School of Medicine: Psychiatry. Retrieved 21 January 2018.
  8. Bandy Lee, Yale University's Violence and Health Study Group. Archived 2016-04-03 at the Wayback Machine Violence Prevention Alliance, World Health Organization. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
  9. Morris, Alex; Morris, Alex (2018-11-12). "What Happens When the Walls Finally Close in on Trump?". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2020-01-21.
  10. Sheehy, Gail. "At Yale, Psychiatrists Cite Their 'Duty to Warn' About an Unfit President". Intelligencer. Retrieved 2020-01-21.
  11. "Interview: Law Professor Richard Painter, Psychiatrist Bandy Lee Explain Views on Trump's Trial". lawandcrime.com. Retrieved 2020-01-21.
  12. Psychiatrist Bandy Lee: "We have an obligation to speak about Donald Trump’s mental health issues. . . . Our survival as a species may be at stake". Archived 2017-11-06 at the Wayback Machine Chauncey DeVega, Salon, 25 May 2017. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
  13. "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" A new book delves into the president’s mental health. Rosemary K.M. Sword and Philip Zimbardo, Psychology Today, 28 September 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2018.
  14. "Correspondence: Psychiatrists Diagnosing the President — Moral Imperative or Ethical Violation?", New England Journal of Medicine, December 27, 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2018.
  15. "Psychiatrists call for rollback of policy banning discussion of public figures’ mental health", STAT News, June 28, 2018. Retrieved 1 July 2018.
  16. "The Goldwater rule is broken. Here's how to fix it". STAT. 2018-06-28. Retrieved 2020-01-21.
  17. B; Lee, Y. X.; Glass, Leonard L. "We're Psychiatrists. It's Our Duty to Question the President's Mental State". POLITICO Magazine. Retrieved 2020-01-21.
  18. Porter, Tom. "350 health professionals sign letter to Congress claiming Trump's mental health is deteriorating dangerously amid impeachment proceedings". Business Insider. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
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