Our Back Story

My report is intended as a public service. An unprecedented report meant for unprecedented times, it seeks to keep with the principles and standards of psychiatry over format of typical presentation, since, for an extraordinary situation, trying to keep with the latter will result in distortion. It is written because, if not for dealing with a global mental health emergency, wherein at stake could be nothing less than humanity’s survival, I do not know what psychiatry is good for. The public will understand this, as it has from the moment it made the request….

So how did a clinician consultant and academic psychiatrist with no background or interest in politics come to speak up nationally about the president? I often say politics invaded my area of expertise, and that would be true. I was in forensic psychiatry, with an almost twenty-year career working with violent offenders. I consulted widely on prison reform and collaborated with governments and international organizations on public health approaches to violence prevention.

In the context of my work increasingly turning global, with an eye on preventing genocides, gender-based violence, and civil wars, domestic U.S. politics was the last on my mind. Yet I was unexpectedly summoned the morning after the 2016 presidential election, starting at 8:00 a.m., when my phone was ringing off the hook and emails were flooding in from civil society organizations, patient advocacy groups, lawyers, students, activists, civil servants, and documentary filmmakers — mostly because of my work with a high-profile prison reform…