STAT News reported today that the American Association has issued a statement to its membership allowing them to defy the so-called Goldwater Rule, which prohibits psychiatrists from giving professional opinions about the mental health of people they have not personally examined. Sharon Begley reports:

The statement, an email this month from the executive committee of the American Psychoanalytic Association to its 3,500 members, represents the first significant crack in the profession’s decades-old united front aimed at preventing experts from discussing the aspects of politicians’ behavior. It will likely make many of its members feel more comfortable speaking openly about ’s mental health.

The Goldwater Rule has emerged as a lightning rod in the psychiatric community since Trump’s election. Mainstream psychiatric bodies have continually reaffirmed adherence to the rule and disallowed any armchair diagnosis of of the president, while some dissidents in the field argue that his observable behavior clearly indicates mental illness, and that his mental state presents such a grave threat to the public as to warrant overriding the rule.

In January, John Gartner, a psychologist in private practice and former professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, launched a petition of mental health professionals who “believe in our professional judgment that Donald Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States.” The petition has so far gathered over 50,000 signatures and sparked widespread discussion about the president’s mental state and what Gartner has termed psychiatric professionals’ “duty to warn.”

The significance of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s move is unclear, though the headline of the STAT article—“Psychiatry group tells members they can defy ‘Goldwater rule’ and comment on Trump’s mental health”—seemed to set off a swift and widespread misunderstanding of the development. The group is comprised of psychoanalysts, some but not all of whom are psychiatrists.

More importantly, the group, whose official acronym is APsaA, is not the dominant national body of psychiatrists, though at a glance its name can be easily confused with the one that is: the American Psychiatric Association. As the country’s major psychiatric organization, the APA is the one that actually instituted the Goldwater Rule and continues to stand by it. In response to the confusion, the APA tweeted this morning:

Source: Twitter

Source: Twitter

Source: Twitter

Source: Twitter

Despite the APA’s clarification, the misunderstanding continues to spread on Twitter that the Goldwater Rule has been overridden or that psychiatrists have been released of their obligation to abide by it if they are members of the APA. Indeed, in order to belong to the organization, psychiatrists must abide by its internal guidelines—which still includes the Goldwater Rule.

–Jennifer Bleyer

Update: Since the publication of this story, the American Psychoanalytic Association issued a clarifying statement about the STAT article.