# Did President Trump Have a Stroke or What? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [June 16, 2020, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767 "2020-06-16T07:28:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/41 "2020-06-17T03:44:37Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > To be a successful combat pilot one has to be almost ridiculously fit: missions may last hours, and you have plenty of G-forces to contend with. I’m skeptical that a mission lasting hours or there being high Gs mean you’re “ridiculously fit.” Air Force pilots need to do the Fighter Aircrew Conditioning Test to tell if they can handle the G forces. Passing scores are: [ul] [li]10x (bodywieght \* 0.35) armcurls[/li][li]10x ((bodywieght \* 0.8) bench press[/li][li]10x ((bodywieght \* 0.7) lat pulldown[/li][li]10x ((bodywieght \* 1.6) leg press[/li][li]10x ((bodywieght \* 0.5) leg curls[/li][li]20x pushups[/li][li]20x crunches[/li][li]20x leg presses[/li][/ul] That’s not very strenuous. Someone that can do that is likely not in awful shape, but it’s not a terribly high bar compared to a D1 athlete.Not sure if fitness levels were lower in WWII, but I imagine they were due to the needed number of people and slower machines. Also, Bush’s supposed athleticism in the 40s is irrelevant to talking about fittest president when he was in office 50 years later. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/42 "2020-06-17T03:54:05Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > If anything, what’s amazing is that any 74-year old - healthy or not - can keep up with the grueling pace of travel and activity that a POTUS has to. I don’t think anyone with eyes would describe Trump’s travel and activity pace as “grueling.” ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/43 "2020-06-17T04:23:40Z")
> [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](#): > > I just now saw the footage of President Trump having trouble with a ramp at West Point the other day… They had a clip of Joe Biden _trotting_ on that same ramp and Obama striding\* like a boss.\* ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/44 "2020-06-17T09:06:00Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > To be a successful combat pilot one has to be almost ridiculously fit: missions may last hours, and you have plenty of G-forces to contend with. > [@Snarky\_Kong](#): > > I’m skeptical that a mission lasting hours or there being high Gs mean you’re “ridiculously fit.” There is a certain baseline state of health you need to get any pilot’s license, military or civilian. More important than brute strength is a healthy cardiovascular system and normal blood pressure because g-forces do put a strain, or perhaps more accurately, a load on your heart and associated bits. This level of health is strongly correlated with a person’s weight being within a range considered healthy (although civilian pilots can be overweight as their requirements are not as stringent as the military) but it is not an absolute. I question that pilots of any sort have to be “extraordinarily fit” (astronauts as a possible exception) but they do tend to be healthier than the _average_ person of their age, especially when you look at older cohorts. That’s because if they fall below a certain level of health they can be grounded. > [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I really wish we had legitimate medical exams for presidential candidates. That could be from his lifts in his shoes, could be something else. Other presidents have had legitimate medical exams because they are not delusional and want to be healthy for their own sake, even if they didn’t want to share details with the public. Maybe we should elect people with less narcissism and a more objective view of reality. > [@Pantastic](#): > > What issues exactly? Like others have pointed out, there are no health requirements for the office of president (or indeed most offices) other than the implied one of being alive. What ‘serious issues’ do you think should be disqualifying, and how do you test for them? For example, I would be opposed to any psychological testing as a qualifier for public office, as psychiatry doesn’t actually have objective criteria for making a diagnosis. Requiring someone to undergo a psych exam lets that psychiatrist disqualify anyone they wish from office, and if they pick their on psychiatrist they will just pick one who affirms that they’re in good condition. > > Bear in mind that a psych test standard likely means that until 1973 gay people would be unable to hold office, as homosexuality was officially a mental illness. And that any black people who escaped slavery in the 1800s would be disqualified because of drapetomania (the mental illness that was literally ‘black people trying to escape slavery’), and those in the 1960s agitating for equal rights would be diagnosed with a flavor of schizophrenia. Thing is - I would argue that many “psychiatric conditions” shouldn’t bar a person from office. Mental health isn’t binary sane/batshit crazy. I’d rather have someone with a treated mental health condition (whether treatment is counseling or medication or a combination or coping strategies or whatever) in office than someone with an untreated mental illness. Some conditions should be exclusionary. A lot of them should NOT. That’s part of the problem of mental health stigma. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/45 "2020-06-17T10:05:29Z")
> [@pool](#): > > Masturbate? > > Excuse me I meant circle jerk. Please don’t do this. It’s one of our more obscure rules that suggesting someone is getting off to current events or such is warnable. I’ve chosen not to here. Let’s just take it to heart, shall we? ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/46 "2020-06-17T10:39:09Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > To be fair to Ford, he was a varsity athlete. His portrayal as clumsy wasn’t at all fair, but it was funny. It’s funnier to mock someone for what he’s not than to mock him for what he is. He famously fell down the steps of a plane while disembarking, back when you just walked down some steps onto the tarmac, and crossed outside into the airport. There were television reporters on the tarmac who caught the whole fall on camera, and everyone played it, every news channel, and Carson I think played it every night for a week, or something. It could have happened to Baryshikov as a once-in-a-lifetime incident, but it followed Ford through his career. Plus the fact that it seemed apt, considering how he “stumbled” into the presidency. > [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > When I saw the video, my first thought was that I would have had the same problem he did. I never had a stroke, but I do have balance problems. I suspect the main cause is peripheral neuropathy, which I have in spades. I cannot comfortably go down even two steps without a rail, or walk on uneven ground or go down such a ramp. I am slightly overweight, but not obese like Trump. Of course, I am also 9 years older. He might have bad knees at his age and weight. He also simply could have poor balance. There are a number of childhood illnesses for which there are now vaccines, but not in Trump’s childhood, that could damage the inner ear, and cause poor balance. It’s unusual for this to happen without hearing loss, but we don’t know that Trump doesn’t wear in-the-canal aids. Actually, if that were true, it could even explain his difficulty with teleprompters. If he’s on a platform dias, on platform shoes, and slightly disoriented by the lights, and the audience at a lower level, and he needs to focus his vision on something to keep his balance, he can’t keep darting his eyes around to teleprompters. I’m not betting money that’s what is happening. Just saying, lots of benign things can cause balance problems, and I doubt Trump would ever admit to anything. He probably wouldn’t admit to a hangnail. He is the perfect physical specimen, after all. > [@John\_DiFool](#): > > To be a successful combat pilot one has to be almost ridiculously fit: missions may last hours, and you have plenty of G-forces to contend with. My stepfather was a 30-yr career Navy pilot with two tours in Vietnam. He is almost 80 now, but is extremely fit. He has some minor back problems, but he takes care of them with a stretching routine in the morning, and OTC NSAIDS. He walks without any support, and can lift quite a bit. He’s not a jogger, but if need be, he can sprint short distances still (a non-smoker since 1966). He shovels his own snow (lives in Maine), and mows his own lawn. He also does not wear glasses, except to read. And he is very slim. Never had a weight problem, and has not lost as much muscle tissue as most people his age will have. There is a certain amount of “exceptionalism” needed to qualify to be a military pilot. You need a better natural constitution than the gen pop. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/47 "2020-06-17T18:38:44Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Some conditions should be exclusionary. A lot of them should NOT. That’s part of the problem of mental health stigma. Exactly what conditions should be exclusionary, and what is the objective test for them? If I say that high blood pressure should disqualify someone from the presidency, that’s objectively measurable and quantifiable. If I say that ‘psychopathy’ should disqualify someone from the presidency, what are the actual criteria for diagnosis, and for it being bad enough to disqualify someone, and is it even possible to be confident that an unsympathetic psychiatrist will not be able to diagnose someone with it? ---
**Author:** ![Mallard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Mallard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mallard)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/48 "2020-06-17T20:15:23Z")
As the walls were closing in on Adolf Hitler in early 1945, he started to develop uncontrollable shakes in one of his arms. Maybe Trump is suffering from a bit of whatever Hitler had. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/49 "2020-06-17T20:41:27Z")
All I know is that the “He can run and drink water” video is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/50 "2020-06-17T21:13:41Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > If anything, what’s amazing is that any 74-year old - healthy or not - can keep up with the grueling pace of travel and activity that a POTUS has to. Yeah, but we’re talking about Donald Trump. He doesn’t do any of that. It boils down to: If a person brags without evidence of their spectacular level of health, but cant lift a glass or a bottle of water all the way to their mouth, and has to use a second hand to tip it up that little bit more, then that person is a lying bastard. Yes, we’re certainly talking about Donald Trump. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/51 "2020-06-17T21:21:32Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Exactly what conditions should be exclusionary, and what is the objective test for them? If I say that high blood pressure should disqualify someone from the presidency, that’s objectively measurable and quantifiable. If I say that ‘psychopathy’ should disqualify someone from the presidency, what are the actual criteria for diagnosis, and for it being bad enough to disqualify someone, and is it even possible to be confident that an unsympathetic psychiatrist will not be able to diagnose someone with it? Not being a psychiatrist I would be hard put to prescribe a highly detailed answer to your question. General guidelines, however, I can supply. I would suggest the following would be disqualifying: 1. Repeated suicide attempts/violence towards oneself 2. Repeated violence towards others 3. A dysfunction that interferes with one’s ability to distinguish reality and hallucinations. Those are three big ones in my mind. As to how likely it would be that an “unsympathetic psychiatrist” would deliberately mis-diagnose those… I don’t know. But I suspect a _sympathetic_ psychiatrist overlooking the above would be more common. I frankly wouldn’t care much if someone has OCD features (unless it prevents them functioning as an adult), or mild depressive features (we might have had a PotUS with that in Lincoln) without self-harm, or PTSD from serving in the military or surviving a traumatic event because all of those are pretty are actually pretty common and people can be very functional and successful despite those problems. As for “objective” - if someone has had repeated suicide attempts or repeatedly attacked other in a physical manner there is probably a decent paper trail. Number 3 is a bit more problematic, admittedly. ---
**Author:** ![crywalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crywalt/32/3224_2.png) [@crywalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crywalt)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2020, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/52 "2020-06-17T23:59:48Z")
We’re not talking here about disqualifying anyone due to _psychiatric_ disorders but _neurological_. If your brain isn’t working right, that should be at least considered when thinking about someone’s qualifications. > **[Body Language Analysis №4154: Donald Trump’s Two-Handed Drinking — Nonverbal...](https://medium.com/@DrGJackBrown/body-language-analysis-4154-donald-trumps-two-handed-drinking-nonverbal-and-emotional-69889d7c5eb0)** > > During two recent speeches in the last five weeks, President Trump has taken drinks of water using two hands. Why? That’s from 2017, before this recent re-run of Ttump’s Drinking Problem. I tend to feel that Ttump – while being evil and horrible and deserving of living the rest of his days under a highway offramp begging for change at the traffic light – is suffering from dementia. It seems clear every time he speaks in public that he’s trying to keep the most recent five things anyone’s told him (in person or via Fox News) in mind but failing, having to drop back to whatever his baseline thoughts happen to be, usually about how great he is and how oppressed he’s been. I get the impression that there are a few super evil minions in his orbit trying to point him like a death ray on a busted gimbal. As for removing presidents because they can’t do the job properly any more, there’s a reason we have the 25th Amendment. There’s also a reason it’s never been used. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2020, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/53 "2020-06-18T00:16:13Z")
If the 25th amendment existed when Wilson was president he may have been removed since he was in very bad health at the end of his 2nd term. The story goes his wife was basically doing all the interactions with others . 25th was passed in 1967 after JFK was killed. ---
**Author:** ![Fiveyearlurker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@Fiveyearlurker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiveyearlurker)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2020, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/54 "2020-06-18T00:29:50Z")
> [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](#): > > I recall the President made an unexplained visit to Walter Reed late last year I think. I don’t know what’s going on with him, but that trip to Walter Reed was 100% not just to get half of his checkup out of the way, which is the official (ridiculous) story. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2020, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/55 "2020-06-18T03:21:17Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Not being a psychiatrist I would be hard put to prescribe a highly detailed answer to your question. General guidelines, however, I can supply. I would suggest the following would be disqualifying: > > 1. Repeated suicide attempts/violence towards oneself > > 2. Repeated violence towards others I don’t understand how a psychiatrist would ‘diagnose’ either of those. If you were going to disqualify for either of those, wouldn’t you just use a ‘is there a history of these’ instead of some sort of ‘diagnosis’? You say later on that ‘there is probably a decent paper trail’, so wouldn’t you just rely on the paper trail itself instead of requiring some kind of psych exam? And what’s the level of evidence required for the ‘paper trail’, is it just convictions of violence, or would documented allegations count? This thing seems like an awful mess, and definitely argues against involving a psychiatric exam. I think that ‘2’ is an absurdly unrealistic criteria and completely ignores actual historical officeholders, as military veterans (especially war heroes) and LEOs have a history of violence towards others but also are generally considered good candidates for office. You’d disqualify twenty nine historical presidents for being veterans, and having a commander in chief and head of law enforcement who is unwilling to use violence towards others seems rather at odds with the requirements of the job. > [@](#): > > 1. A dysfunction that interferes with one’s ability to distinguish reality and hallucinations. You mean like the schizophrenia diagnosed in black civil rights activists in the 1960s for being ‘angry’ and ‘hostile’? Or the drapetomania responsible for slaves running away from their rightful place, which clearly shows them unable to distinguish the ‘reality’ that they belong in servitude? And how much of LGBT identities qualified as a dysfunction that was clearly interfering with one’s ability to distinguish the reality (of what gender they were or who they should be partnering with) before they were de-pathologized? If you’re just talking about neurological conditions indicating issues with cognitive function and not psychiatric conditions, then you’d use a neurologist (or similar physical doctor) rather than a psychiatrist for the diagnosis, and again don’t need any psychiatric exam at all. And the psychiatric exam was what I objected to. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2020, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/56 "2020-06-18T03:25:51Z")
> [@crywalt](#): > > We’re not talking here about disqualifying anyone due to _psychiatric_ disorders but _neurological_. If your brain isn’t working right, that should be at least considered when thinking about someone’s qualifications. QuickSilver and Broomstick were talking specifically about psychiatric (well, specifically psychological for Quicksilver) exams and conditions, and I was objecting specifically to use any psychiatric exam as a qualifier for office. I’ve quoted the post that I was referring to at first, and then the one I followed up to for clarification. Neurological tests are generally reasonably objective and almost entirely not politicized, psych tests are highly subjective and highly politicized, hence my objection to the latter. > [@QuickSilver](#): > > I suspect a thorough physical and psychological exam by qualified medical professionals would reveal a host of serious issues disqualifying him from public office. > [@Broomstick](#): > > Thing is - I would argue that many “psychiatric conditions” shouldn’t bar a person from office. Mental health isn’t binary sane/batshit crazy. I’d rather have someone with a treated mental health condition (whether treatment is counseling or medication or a combination or coping strategies or whatever) in office than someone with an untreated mental illness. > > Some conditions should be exclusionary. A lot of them should NOT. That’s part of the problem of mental health stigma. ---
**Author:** ![tripthicket](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripthicket/32/297_2.png) [@tripthicket](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tripthicket)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2020, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/57 "2020-06-18T05:58:45Z")
What might be the resulting physical conditions suffered by the removal of the back half of a centaur? I’m not a scientist or a doctor, so ‘hindquarterectomy’ is the closest I can come to naming this procedure, let alone trying to speculate on the aftermath. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2020, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/58 "2020-06-18T06:26:00Z")
This new Biden ad is amazing: https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=224&width=400&href=https://www.facebook.com/AmericanLiberals/videos/268064367764393/ and on point! (Biden vs trump, fitness) ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2020, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/59 "2020-06-18T07:11:37Z")
> [@Akaj](#): > > No way … Obama could post up Ford all day. I’m going to throw in Jimmy Carter. Sure, he’s got cancer, but that’s not gonna stop him from continuing to help build houses! ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2020, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767/60 "2020-06-18T07:17:55Z")
> [@crywalt](#): > > We’re not talking here about disqualifying anyone due to _psychiatric_ disorders but _neurological_. If your brain isn’t working right, that should be at least considered when thinking about someone’s qualifications. There is some overlap between neurological and psychiatric, and even if we can’t pinpoint an organic dysfunction if you have a mental illness arguably your brain isn’t working right for whatever reason. Also, not all neurological conditions should disqualify a person from office. For example, epilepsy is very definitely neurological and can be quite serious, but in most cases it can be controlled. If a person’s epilepsy does not interfere with their ability to get a job done it should not be a basis for exclusion. And if a psychiatric condition, or mental illness, is debilitating yes, it should disqualify someone from office. But the “debilitation” should be due to actual inability to function in the job, not societal stigmatization. > [@Pantastic](#): > > I don’t understand how a psychiatrist would ‘diagnose’ either of those. If you were going to disqualify for either of those, wouldn’t you just use a ‘is there a history of these’ instead of some sort of ‘diagnosis’? You say later on that ‘there is probably a decent paper trail’, so wouldn’t you just rely on the paper trail itself instead of requiring some kind of psych exam? And what’s the level of evidence required for the ‘paper trail’, is it just convictions of violence, or would documented allegations count? This thing seems like an awful mess, and definitely argues against involving a psychiatric exam. Yes, it’s a bit of a mess - I’m sorry, were you under the impression that when people are evaluated in real life the backstory is nice and tidy? For that matter, diagnosing physical ailments not involving the nervous system can also be tricky. That’s why medical histories are taken in the first place, to establish _patterns_ of behavior. I’m not talking about someone who 20 years before got into a fist-fight but otherwise shows no anger control issues. I’m talking about someone with a protracted history of being unable to control themselves or engaging in harmful behavior. I wouldn’t want an active drunk in the White House, either, and you make that diagnosis based on a history of the person’s behavior (sometimes there are physical indications as well, such as liver problems). If a person with a history of alcoholism runs for such an office I think it’s reasonable to ask if said person had been sober for an extended period of time (maybe a decade or two, preferably longer) and had their problem under control. If not, no I wouldn’t want that person in such a job. That’s an example of a problem where history is largely how you make a diagnosis. It’s also an example of something that can be controlled sufficiently well that you can trust someone with that level of responsibility. > [@Pantastic](#): > > I think that ‘2’ is an absurdly unrealistic criteria and completely ignores actual historical officeholders, as military veterans (especially war heroes) and LEOs have a history of violence towards others but also are generally considered good candidates for office. You’d disqualify twenty nine historical presidents for being veterans, and having a commander in chief and head of law enforcement who is unwilling to use violence towards others seems rather at odds with the requirements of the job. Oh, good god, I forgot that I have to write a book every time I post. I thought it would be obvious that I was talking about _criminal violence_, not sanctioned. I thought would be even more obvious when I stated PTSD should not automatically disqualify a veteran. Being a soldier is not disqualifying - not to mention that many soldiers, even during a war, never actually engage in combat due to being in a support role rather than front-line combatant. Being a police officer is not disqualifying (although being a murderous, loose-cannon corrupt police officer should be). Hurting someone in self-defense or defense of another is not disqualifying. There are times and reasons for engaging in violence. I was speaking of a _pattern_ of non-rational, criminal, non-justifiable violence. Wife-beaters, not Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. > [@Pantastic](#): > > You mean like the schizophrenia diagnosed in black civil rights activists in the 1960s for being ‘angry’ and ‘hostile’? Or the drapetomania responsible for slaves running away from their rightful place, which clearly shows them unable to distinguish the ‘reality’ that they belong in servitude? And how much of LGBT identities qualified as a dysfunction that was clearly interfering with one’s ability to distinguish the reality (of what gender they were or who they should be partnering with) before they were de-pathologized? Yes, those are problematic uses of psychiatry from history. You forgot the USSR’s imprisoning people in psychiatric hospitals because they were opposed to communism which in that society was a sign you were nuts. Or lots of societies excluding women from voting and office because they were too delicate or emotional or whatever - basically, because they were women. Let’s look at sexual proclivities outside the norm (which would cover your example of homosexuality). I would argue that if the kink doesn’t interfere with functioning in office it shouldn’t be disqualifying. If a president has such a strong fixation on high heel shoes as an erotic thing that he is unable to function sexually unless his partner is wearing them that’s a very strong fetish… but I fail to see how it would interfere with his duties as PotUS. Now, if he’s _stealing_ shoes, or can’t control himself around shoes, that’s a different matter but needing shoes during bedroom gymnastics isn’t, in my mind, disqualifying. Your other examples are people refusing to put up with injustice and others calling them crazy to maintain the status quo. Back in the day when those were used not everyone was convinced of the reality of those “disorders” - abolitionists had some pretty eloquent rebuttals regarding drapetomania and pointing out similar arguments had been made against serf uprisings in Europe or people wanting to live in a democracy rather than a monarchy. > [@Pantastic](#): > > If you’re just talking about neurological conditions indicating issues with cognitive function and not psychiatric conditions, then you’d use a neurologist (or similar physical doctor) rather than a psychiatrist for the diagnosis, and again don’t need any psychiatric exam at all. And the psychiatric exam was what I objected to. So… you’re one of those people who don’t believe in psychiatry or actual mental illness? A psychiatrist is an MD specializing in mental illness and as I have already pointed out there is some overlap there. When one of my nephews was left brain-damaged from a head injury the neurologists diagnosed him but long-term it was psychiatrists who helped him deal with and manage the aftermath and resulting impairments, which were a mixture of injury-caused physical problems and having to deal with very understandable anger and frustration at going from being a healthy young main to a disabled young man with a brain less capable of coping with those emotions in a constructive manner. A psychiatrist is supposed to take a physical history while doing an exam of the sort you object to and can order things like MRI’s and CAT scans to see if there’s a clear physical cause modern medicine can determine, or if a person’s mental state is a combination of physical and mental problems (because it can be _normal_ to have some symptoms after a physical trauma, or when dealing with limitations, to the point that after some kinds of severe trauma it’s considered odd if a patient _doesn’t_ think of suicide). In the US (and most likely a lot of other countries, I didn’t bother to look it up because we’re discussing this in a US context) psychiatrists are also required to study neurology, on top of what’s already required for their basic medical degree. Are there crappy psychiatrists? You bet - just like there are crappy MD’s. Because psychiatrists ARE MD’s (also a few DO’s). There are others that do a lot of good in the world. Don’t mistake random pop-psych people on the internet for actual medical doctors specializing in mental illness. Don’t treat _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_ as a documentary. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-president-trump-have-a-stroke-or-what/855767.md?page=4)