No diagnosis can be conclusive based on public persona

Assessing Donald Trump's mental health from afar and concluding that he is suffering from a mental illness is damaging for three reasons. Firstly, there is no way of seeing the full picture without a one-on-one assessment. Mental health professionals carry out an examination with an understanding of the emotional stresses an individual is under and the upheaval present in their personal lives. Without this understanding, it is impossible to give an accurate assessment.^[1] An underlying cause for Trump's narcissism, like a bipolar disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, could be present. But these may be missed or wrongly diagnosed without a comprehensive face-to-face assessment.^[2] Secondly, from a mental health perspective, giving the president the label of mentally ill without thorough testing is damaging to patients already suffering from mental illness. Using it as a political weapon against him fuels stigma around mental illnesses. Senators like Lindsey Graham who called Trump a "kook", are adding to the negative attitudes towards mental illness. With a clear diagnosis, public figures would likely move from seeing Trump's mental state as a weakness, to a source of sympathy. Without a diagnosis, it will remain a derogatory channel of attack, which is very damaging to patients suffering from mental health disorders.^[3] Finally, without an evaluation and a conclusive test, Trump and the Republican party can brush mental illness as partisan bias. This is damaging for the mental health field as a whole. Belittling mental health and reducing diagnoses to the realm of political bias undermines the field. Therefore, it is in the scientific communities interests to refrain from offering a public diagnosis of Trump without a comprehensive, one-on-one evaluation.

[P1] Nobody can receive an accurate diagnosis without a one-on-one professional examination. [P2] Therefore, Trump may or may not be mentally ill.