Is Donald Trump mentally ill? It's a question that has been gaining more and more traction over the past week or so and it's reaching fever pitch on social media, with many people convincing themselves – and others – that he must have some sort of mental health problem. For several reasons, I find this very question not only unhelpful but downright offensive.

People have started bandying around mental health labels with abandon. Suddenly, with their training on psychiatric diagnostic criteria courtesy of a full 4 minutes spent on Google, everyone is now a psychiatrist. They are debating whether or not the newly-elected US president is a narcissist. Does he have a personality disorder? Is he actually psychotic? A psychopath? And then of course there's my own personal bête noir – sociopath, which isn't even a proper medical diagnosis but is used by people to appear clever when trying to put someone down.

Firstly, what has prompted many people to start questioning his mental health is that they find his views unpleasant and unpalatable. They simply can't understand why someone would think those things.

But being racist, misogynistic or generally offensive is not a mental illness. You can profoundly disagree with people and not like them without them having to have a serious psychological problem. Evoking mental illness as a reason is profoundly lazy. It avoids people having to engage in debate at all – it allows the person's views to be dismissed out of hand, explained away by an aberration of their mind, rather than a view that should be engaged with, debated and beaten.

Evoking stigma

Further to this, the suggestion that if Donald Trump can be shown to have a mental illness then this implies he isn't fit to be president is also grossly offensive to those with mental illness. Having a mental illness does not – and should not – preclude you from holding public office. The natural conclusion to 'Donald Trump is mentally ill' is that those with mental illness shouldn't be leaders. This is utter tosh. Again, it's just lazy shorthand for 'I don't like this person, he needs to go' and is particularly repellent because it evokes the stigma and fear of mental illness to do it.

Responsibility for actions

I've also seen some very well meaning people discussing his mental health on social media, arguing that it would mean he would not be culpable for his actions and somehow mitigates responsibility. Again, this demonstrates a woeful lack of understanding about mental illness. Sure, some people who are very unwell with serious psychiatric illnesses can be deemed no longer responsible for the actions. But this is fairly rare and you have to be really very unwell. If you're depressed and you punch someone, you're still responsible for your actions. People can be bad and do scary things without being mentally ill. They can act recklessly, stupidly or in a selfish, arrogant, self obsessed, or boorish manner without having a mental illness.

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Professionals wading in

What's been particularly surprising and shocking is that it's not just lay members of the public who have been wading in on Trump's mental health. It's been professionals. This is deeply worrying and they should be ashamed for having behaved in this way. As they have not actually assessed him professionally, everything they say is simply conjecture and guess work.

Diagnosing someone with a personality disorder, for example, is not something that is quick and easy to do. You can't do it by just listening to a few speeches and how they appear to respond to a few situations that you've seen on the telly. It does mental health professional and their patients a great disservice to suggest that that is all there is to reaching a diagnosis. Personality disorders in particular are highly stigmatised, misunderstood and vilified conditions when in fact those that suffer from them deserve our compassion and understanding. They certainly don't need to have their condition banded about as an explanation for why someone is unpopular with a large number of people.

But because some of these diagnoses have been have been coming from 'professionals', their opinions are given weight and it helps perpetuate the belief that there must be something wrong with his mind. The power that professionals have and the profound and unfair damage that can occur when they stray into making diagnoses from afar is well acknowledged and is considered a gross violation of one's professional ethics. It is so well know and enshrined in medical ethics it actually has a name – the Goldwater Rule - and it's been around for over 40 years.

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The Goldwater rule

The Goldwater rule has been in place since 1973 and the American Psychiatric Association and its members have strictly abided by it since. It prohibits psychiatrists from offering opinions on someone they have not personally evaluated. Interestingly, this rule came about from a presidential campaign in 1964. A self-aggrandising, anti-establishment figure who mobilised disenfranchised right wing voters, ran for president. His name was Barry Goldwater. Liberals loathed him and did everything they could do discredit him. A magazine, Fact, approached 12,000 psychiatrists, asking for them to evaluate whether or not he was psychologically fit to be president. The vast majority did not respond, but a significant minority – over 1000 – responded saying that they did not think he was psychological fit to be president. He lost the election and afterwards, he sued the magazine for slander. He won substantial damages.

The parallels between Goldwater and Trump are obvious, except that Trump, unlike Goldwater, won the election and became president. Then, just as now, those that opposed him turned to psychiatry to try and discredit the person they objected to.

Throughout history, psychiatry has been used to silence, remove, eradicate or weaken opponents. But in order for it to do this effectively, it relies on the stigma that surrounds mental illness – stigma that needs to be quashed. It should make us all profoundly uncomfortable that in 2017 we've so easily strayed back into this territory.

Dr Max Pemberton Max Pemberton is a doctor, journalist and writer who works in mental health.

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