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Mar 22

Clinicians defend Biden’s fitness, warn of Trump’s decline – Baltimore Sun

Fitness Comments Off on Clinicians defend Biden’s fitness, warn of Trump’s decline – Baltimore Sun

Donald Trumps prediction that the country or, at least, the American automobile industry will experience a bloodbath if he is not returned to the presidency was excessive and crude. But over-the-top rhetoric is not new and, for more than 400 licensed medical professionals, its not the most troubling aspect of Trumps public performances.

They see evidence that the former president, at 77, is suffering from probable dementia so they have signed their names, along with hundreds of others, to an online statement asserting that grave concern.

Of course, his detractors claim President Joe Biden, at 81, is the one who shows such signs, and they continue to do so even after Bidens solid delivery of the State of the Union address. The age and fitness of both candidates is a major concern for voters.

But, under the banner of Duty To Warn, organized by Baltimore-based psychologist John Gartner, both clinicians and researchers have joined an effort to defend Biden against dementia claims and warn the nation about what they see as Trumps cognitive decline.

The media never tire of asking, Is [President Joe] Biden too old? Gartner says. Polls showed twice as many people were worried about Bidens cognitive health as Trumps, when Bidens memory lapses are within the normal limits for his age [81]. We all get more forgetful as we age. To say that makes us incompetent or too old is ageism. I would argue that Ive garnered wisdom and judgment from life experience that more than compensates for my memory blips. And I think the same could be said of Biden. Thats why I say Bidens brain is aging, but Trumps brain is dementing.

Mainstream media, says Gartner, push a false equivalency that Biden and Trump are two old men prone to mistakes, presenting equally unappealing choices. In fact, says Gartner, comparing Biden to Trump is comparing apples to rotted oranges. Biden, he notes, had a lifelong struggle with stuttering and was always known for gaffes, while Trumps verbal skills, back in his Manhattan celebrity days, were at a higher level; they are now greatly diminished.

Gartner, a psychotherapist who was an assistant professor for 28 years at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, has found credible help sounding this alarm. The statement the other professionals signed claims Trump is showing unmistakable signs strongly suggesting dementia, based on his public behavior and informant reports.

The statement cites a decline in Trumps baseline verbal fluency. [Trump] was once highly articulate, with a sophisticated vocabulary, and spoke in polished paragraphs, the experts say. Now, his vocabulary is impoverished, he often has difficulty finishing a thought, sentence or even a word. Typical of dementia patients, he [repeats] and overuses superlatives and filler words.

Duty to Warn has 430,000 followers on X, formerly Twitter. Since last week, a post about Trumps probable dementia has had more than 1.7 million views.

In a long series of testimonials attached to the original post, doctors and other professionals cite Trumps use of incorrect words or jumbled words, suggesting a condition known as paraphasia, a common indicator of dementia. The experts note that Trump frequently makes errors he does not recognize and correct, and mixes up people across generations, mistaking a father for a grandfather.

But Trump has always rambled when he addresses MAGA rallies. So how do Gartner and the dozens of professionals he consulted discern signs of dementia?

When you are literally unable to form words and what youre saying is so incomprehensible that its impossible for someone to understand what you are saying, thats not rambling, says Gartner. Those are serious signs of dementia. If you saw them in a relative, you would run, not walk, to a specialist to get them tested and start thinking about long-term care.

The evidence for dementia in Donald Trump has become overwhelming, writes Dr. Lance Dodes, a psychiatrist and retired professor of the Harvard Medical School. Unlike normal aging, which is characterized by forgetting names or words, Trump repeatedly shows something very different: confusion about reality.

Suzanne Lachman, a New York psychologist, posted this: [Trump will] begin a sentence, and then seemingly forget how the sentence began and invent something in the middle, and then go off on a tangent that results in an incomprehensible word salad. This is behavior we observe frequently in patients who have dementia.

If this guy presented in my office with the symptoms we observe in his public appearances, Id refer him at once to a neurologist for a full workup, wrote John Biggs, a social worker and retired psychotherapist who was based at Sheppard Pratt for 30 years. I wouldnt write him an OK-to-return-to-work note, much less declare him fit to occupy the countrys highest office.

The Alzheimers Society last month published an essay saying diagnosis at a distance is unethical and usually wrong.

Gartner strongly disagrees. Trump and Biden are, next to Taylor Swift, the most exposed people in the country. There are ample ways to observe their behavior and hear their words every day. In real medicine, Gartner argues, thousands of psychiatrists make diagnoses every day in clinical practice based on observation of behavior, history and informant reports. Research shows all of those methods are actually more accurate and reliable than a clinical interview.

The greatest ethical responsibility, he says, is the duty to warn, and at a critical time for the nation.

Originally posted here:
Clinicians defend Biden's fitness, warn of Trump's decline - Baltimore Sun

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