Donald Trump in Need of 'Hospital-Level Care' as Midterms Pose Biggest Test of His Mental State, Psychiatrist Says

A forensic psychiatrist has argued that Donald Trump should be receiving "hospital-level" psychiatric care as questions about the president's mental state persist and potential neurological incidents pile up.

Psychiatrist Bandy Lee, a longtime Trump critic, made the argument to MeidasTouch's Anthony Davis on The Weekend Show on October 25.

Lee said that when Trump was convicted in 2024 of 34 felonies regarding his hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, a panel of psychiatrists gave the judge in the trial, Justice Juan Merchan, a "dangerous risk assessment" of the president ahead of sentencing.

“The next thing to do was to order a hospital-level evaluation of him to assess the degree of dangerousness to decide on sentencing,” Lee said. “Or the justice could have just taken our recommendation of maximum sentencing because of his danger to the public.”

Lee said the panel gave Trump a 36 out of 40 on the risk assessment exam, when the threshold for receiving medical psychiatric care as a prisoner is 30.

Merchan postponed sentencing for Trump, who was a presidential candidate at the time, and ultimately gave Trump an unconditional discharge when he won the 2024 election.

Lee said Trump has only grown more "hospitalizable" in the years since.

She argued that the need for intervention is more dire than ever ahead of the midterms, framing it as "the most dangerous period in American history because a man with this fragile mental state is going to find himself on the losing end."

"He's going to become more aggressive and more demanding, partly probably because he’s feeling himself diminishing,” she said.

"He needs hospital-level care," she continued. "The more he gets what he asks for, the more his expectations will balloon, and in fact the more miserable he will become and more dangerous.”

Lee cited the president's numerous recent incidents that have raised discussion about his neurological state.

For example, she brought up a moment where Trump appeared to wander aimlessly toward Marine One and wave at no one in a stark scene last week.

Others have suggested that a string of bizarre clips from Trump's recent rallies, in which he made inexplicable noises mid-sentence, showed cognitive decline, saying the clips could be evidence of "vocally disruptive behavior," which is common in seniors suffering dementia.

Lee has not personally examined Trump but has written about his neurological health in the past.

In 2017, she and other psychiatrists wrote The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, where she questioned Trump's mental health. Her criticism and opinions of Trump's mental state got her fired from Yale on the basis of her commenting on the mental health of someone she had not personally examined.

In September, she argued that Trump's repeated and unproven tale of post-9/11 heroism shows how he must always depict himself as "king of the universe," and that such behavior "tracks with the behavior of a small child."