Bandy X. Lee

Bandy X. Lee
MD, MDiv
Born 1970 (age 47–48)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Education Yale University School of Medicine, Yale Divinity School
Occupation Psychiatrist
Medical career
Institutions Yale School of Medicine
Specialism Violence prevention

Bandy X. 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. In 2017 she organized a conference on the mental health of President Donald Trump at Yale and was the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book of essays that has contributed to the debate about Trump's mental stability and within the psychiatric profession about the interpretation of the Goldwater rule.

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.[1]

Career

Lee interned at the Bellevue Hospital Center in New York and was chief resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She received her MD from Yale University School of Medicine in 1994 and her MDiv from Yale Divinity School in 1995.[2] She then studied the anthropology of violence in East Africa as a fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health[3] 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[2] and worked for several years in maximum security prisons in the United States[1] when she was instrumental in initiating reforms at New York's Rikers Island jail complex.[2] 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.[3] She heads a project group of the Violence Prevention Alliance for the World Health Organization.[2]

Views on Donald Trump

In April 2017 Lee hosted a meeting at Yale University medical school to discuss the mental health of President Donald Trump.[4][5] In an interview with Salon in May 2017 she argued that the subject of the President's mental health amounted to a "state of emergency" as "our survival as a species may be at stake."[6] She also discussed her political views, linking what she sees as increasing inequality in the United States to a deterioration in collective mental health.[6] Later in 2017 she was the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book of essays that examined Trump's mental health[7] and resulted in her receiving thousands of threatening messages by letter, phone and on social media that included death threats.[1] In December 2017 she met 12 members of the United States Congress (11 Democrats, one Republican) to give them her opinion on the mental health of Donald Trump in which she reportedly argued that he was "unraveling".[1] She later made clear, however, the difficulty of arranging meetings with Republican members.[8] She has since met other Democratic law-makers.[9]

Lee's book and her presentation to members of Congress has contributed to the debate about whether the Goldwater rule, the informal name given to the rule of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) that it is unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional opinion about public figures they have not examined, still holds and its precise interpretation.[1][10][11] 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".[12] Lieberman himself, however, was later reported to have speculated on diagnosing Trump, the very act he accused Lee and colleagues of committing.[13][14]

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)
  • The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. Thomas Dunne Books, 2017. (Editor) ISBN 978-1250179456

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Are Donald Trump’s test results fake news? Rhys Blakely, The Times, 18 January 2018. Retrieved 21 January 2018. (subscription required)
  2. 1 2 3 4 Bandy X. Lee, MD, MDiv. Archived 2018-01-18 at the Wayback Machine. Yale School of Medicine: Psychiatry. Retrieved 21 January 2018.
  3. 1 2 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.
  4. ↑ An Ethical Dilemma. Archived 2018-01-24 at the Wayback Machine. Susan Milligan, U.S. News, 21 April 2017. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
  5. ↑ Who Is Bandy Lee? Trump's Mental Health Questioned By Yale Psychiatrist. Archived 2018-01-24 at the Wayback Machine. Gayathri Anuradha, International Business Times, 3 January 2018. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
  6. 1 2 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.
  7. ↑ "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.
  8. ↑ Trump's brain, a national problem Bandy Lee, New York Daily News, 12 January 2018. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  9. ↑ DeLauro invites Yale psychiatrist to discuss Trump’s mental health. Archived 2018-01-06 at the Wayback Machine. Ana Radelat, ctmirror.org, 5 January 2018. Retrieved 23 January 2018.
  10. ↑ Washington's growing obsession: The 25th Amendment. Archived 2018-01-21 at the Wayback Machine. Annie Karni, Politico, 3 January 2018. Retrieved 21 January 2018.
  11. ↑ Yale psychiatry professor warns President Trump’s mental health is ‘unraveling’ in meeting with more than a dozen lawmakers. Archived 2018-01-22 at the Wayback Machine. Jessica Chia, New York Daily News, 4 January 2018. Retrieved 21 January 2018.
  12. ↑ "Correspondence: Psychiatrists Diagnosing the President — Moral Imperative or Ethical Violation?", New England Journal of Medicine, December 27, 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2018.
  13. ↑ "Trump fans threatened psychiatrists who warned trump was inciting violence", Daily Beast, January 17, 2018. Retrieved 1 July 2018.
  14. ↑ "Psychiatrists call for rollback of policy banning discussion of public figures’ mental health", STAT News, June 28, 2018. Retrieved 1 July 2018.
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