A psychiatrist who claims to have briefed more than a dozen U.S. lawmakers on President Trump's mental state is calling for an "emergency" evaluation of the president, even restraining him by force if necessary.

In fact, she claims, failure to address President Trump's declining mental-health state could even lead to "the extinction of the human species."

Bandy Lee, an assistant professor in forensic psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and author of "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," says she briefed Democrats and one Republican on Trump's mental health status on Dec. 5 and 6. Lee is joined by Harvard's Judith Herman and Columbia's Robert Jay Lifton. The three – none of whom has actually examined the president – released a statement warning that Trump is "further unraveling."

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In an interview with the left-leaning publication Vox.com, Lee said President Trump's meltdown was triggered by special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of Trump associates. As WND reported, two were charged with so-called "process crimes" (Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos) and two others with crimes unrelated to the Trump-Russia investigation (Paul Manafort and Richard Gates).

"The special counsel's indictments started a crisis — a mental health crisis in a president who is not able to cope well with ordinary stresses such as basic criticism or unflattering news," Lee said. "... When he returned [from his Asia trip in November] and faced the progress of the special counsel's investigation, he became more paranoid, returning to conspiracy theories that he had let go of for a while. ... Also, the sheer frequency of his tweets seemed to reflect the frantic state of mind he was entering, and his retweeting some violent anti-Muslim videos showed a concerning attraction to violence. And then there were the belligerent nuclear threats this week."

Lee, who claimed the three are not "diagnosing" the president, said, "We are mainly concerned that an emergency evaluation be done."

She told Vox.com she's concerned that if Trump is having a mental breakdown, the situation could lead to U.S. military action against North Korea and a nuclear holocaust.

"[T]hat is not the only danger we're facing," Lee insisted. "There's everything in between: provoking our allies and alienating them, instigating civil conflict, and laying a foundation for a violent culture that could give way to epidemics of violence — not to mention poke a beehive in the Middle East by declaring Jerusalem as Israel's capital. All of these actions are consistent with the pathological pattern he has already shown of resorting to violence the more he feels threatened."

Lee even insists no "serious" psychiatrist would say Trump isn't "dangerous."

"It would be hard to find a single psychiatrist, no matter of what political affiliation, who could confidently say Trump is not dangerous," she said. "I am sure there are some who feel unsure, or feel that they don’t have enough information or the expertise, and that is fine, since not everyone has devoted her 20-year career to studying, predicting, and preventing violence like I have. But there has not been a single serious mental health expert who disagrees on the medical side."

Concerned individuals may contact Bandy Lee at Yale University.

Lee, who said the mental-health experts are not making a diagnosis but assessing whether Trump is dangerous, continued:

Assessing dangerousness is making a judgment about the situation, not the person. The same person may not be dangerous in a different situation, for example. And it is his threat to public health, not his personal affairs, that is our concern. ... Also, once you declare danger, you are calling first for containment and removal of weapons from the person and, second, for a full evaluation — which may then yield diagnoses. Until that happens, physicians and mental health professionals are expected to err on the side of safety and can be held legally liable if they fail to act. So we’re merely calling for an urgent evaluation so that we may have definitive answers. In doing that, we are fulfilling a routine, public expectation of duty that comes with our profession — the only part that is unusual is that this is happening in the presidency. Perhaps this is reason to build in a fitness for duty, or capacity, exam for presidential candidates, just like for military officers, so that this does not happen again.

But how can psychiatrists evaluate President Trump if he won't voluntarily submit to an evaluation?

Lee suggested a forceful evaluation, but she warned it could "really look like a coup":

We encounter this often in mental health. Those who most require an evaluation are the least likely to submit to one. That is the reason why in all 50 states we have not only the legal authority, but often the legal obligation, to contain someone even against their will when it's an emergency. So in an emergency, neither consent nor confidentiality requirements hold. Safety comes first. What we do in the case of danger is we contain the person, we remove them from access to weapons, and we do an urgent evaluation. This is what we have been calling for with the president based on basic medical standards of care. Surprisingly, many lawyer groups have actually volunteered, on their own, to file for a court paper to ensure that the security staff will cooperate with us. But we have declined, since this will really look like a coup, and while we are trying to prevent violence, we don't wish to incite it through, say, an insurrection.

Lee said she has been discussing this scenario with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and they "seem surprisingly OK" with what she had to say.

"They received us enthusiastically!" Lee said. "Their level of concern was surprisingly high. From the dozen we have met with, it seemed they were already convinced of the dangerousness of the president and the need for an evaluation."

Lee also told Newsweek that Trump's mental health state could lead to the extinction of the human race.

"As more time passes, we come closer to the greatest risk of danger, one that could even mean the extinction of the human species," she said. "This is not hyperbole. This is the reality."

As WND reported last July, it has long been considered unethical for psychiatrists to "diagnose" politicians or public figures based solely on that person's public actions or statements, without conducting an actual in-person examination. But now that Trump is president, a national psychology organization, the American Psychoanalytic Association, has given psychoanalysts the green light to publicly comment on Trump's mental health.

Without ever having examined Trump, psychological professionals already have called the president "psychotic," "narcissistic," "paranoid," "hypomanic," "emotionally unstable," "delusional" and "psychologically isolated" and claimed he has a "dangerous mental illness." One physician suggested Trump could be suffering from an untreated sexually transmitted disease known as neurosyphilis.

Some mental health "experts" have even gone so far as to call conservatism a mental illness, claiming prominent Republicans have shown signs of denial, delusion, hallucination, disordered thinking, anger, anti-social behavior, sexual preoccupation, grandiosity, general oddness and paranoia.

