A Declaration of Psychiatric Interdependence and Independence

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

Yesterday, we posted our weekly video on the 238th anniversary of our country’s Constitution and considered how the clauses related to mental health and psychiatry.

We are also coming up to the 250th year anniversary of our other great document, the Declaration on Independence, on July 4, 2026. However, now our major conflict is within instead of without, much more like our Civil War than the Vietnam War. Even now, a member of Congress recommends considering a divorce of the so-called Red States from the Blue ones.

Consider this rephrasing—from a psychiatric perspective—of the original Declaration of Independence:

When it becomes necessary in the course of mental health events to protest political policies, it is a psychiatric ethical principle to try to improve the community, given that all people have these human rights: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Psychiatrist patriots, with the inspiration of Paul Revere in our country’s founding, might provide midnight (and mid-day!) Internet postings of warning for the mental health of our citizens.

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

Specifically, there are some existing and emerging policies of the Health and Human Services administration that need to be reconsidered or overthrown. These new obstacles are added on to the already inadequate mental resources and decade of rise of the prevalence of mental disorders.

1. Since there is no health without mental health, some new harmful health policies will likely have psychiatric ramifications. These include the likely trauma and losses in morbidity and mortality from the drop in vaccinations.
2. In the restructuring of HHS, the leading national mental health care agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is in the process of being decimated in budget and staff.
3. While we know that occasional adverse effects of certain psychiatric medications can increase agitation, that can be managed by various strategies, including continuing education, reduction in medication dose, and/or switching to another treatment like evidence-based nonpharmacologic treatments, but not to have proposed restrictions on the research and availability of such crucial medication for children, adolescents, and adults.
4. The growing homeless population, overrepresented by those with mental illness and substance abuse, will not be solved by forced incarceration or criminalization, but rather adequate housing and positively addressing other social determinants of mental health.
5. A presidential executive order stated that biological sex and gender characteristics are binary and therefore there is no transgenderism, as reported in the CNN Health report on May 28, 2025, “HHS letter tells health care providers to disregard treatment protocols for trans people, adhere to report by unnamed authors.”¹ Children and adolescents with trans identification will thereby not receive necessary psychiatric and medical treatment, and there are threats to such treatment and safe social integration for trans adults. Having been a medical director of the only clinical serving the trans community in the Midwest around the turn of the new millennia, we have to recognize that there are trans people who know they identity with the other gender from early childhood, but also those who later socially experiment with gender fluidity. Coincidentally or not, the shot that assassinated Charlie Kirk was fired right after he mentioned the trans issue.

All these and other new HHS policies threaten the human rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Along this contentious way now, we must avoid the political abuse of psychiatry.² As the current commentary in The Lancet Psychiatry notes, among other potential political abuses over the past year, some state senators have attempted to introduce legislation to diagnose political adversaries as “mentally ill.”

In one sense, we are an independent medical specialty, but we are also interdependent with societal needs and licensing. We are appealing for the opportunity to rectify our society’s obstacles for the improved well-being of our country.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

Dr Fleming is an integrative psychiatrist in Kansas City, MO.

References

1. Christensen J. HHS letter tells health care providers to disregard treatment protocols for trans people, adhere to report by unnamed authors. CNN. May 28, 2025. Accessed September 18, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/28/health/transgender-care-letter-kennedy

2. Rivera CO. Political abuse in psychiatry: avoid repeating history. Lancet Psychiatry. 2025;S2215-0366(25)00141-5.