Psychiatrist’s Analysis of Withdrawal and Health –

There is no end of talk about Joe Biden. Leaving the presidential race was complex not only on a political level, “but also on a psychological level”. He had to develop an “awareness, not easy, of his limits”, and come to “accept the end of a phase of his life” in a “sudden, dramatic” way and contrary to the plans prepared for a long time. This is in summary the analysis to Adnkronos Salute by psychiatrist Giancarlo Cerveri, advisor to the Italian Society of Psychiatry (SIP), regarding the long resistance of the US president to abandon the electoral campaign for a new mandate at the White House. “Biden’s choice prompts, in addition to very important political reflections, also a deeply personal question of a medical nature”, observes the psychiatrist. For some time now, he recalls, “moments in which Joe Biden was seen as absent or distracted had been described”.

A situation that exploded in the “face to face with the opponent Donald Trump”. A discussion and a debate, those on the alleged cognitive decline, “particularly complex for two reasons – explains Cerveri – The first is that the cognitive symptoms seemed to have a fluctuating trend, on some occasions they were evident and on others they were not observed. The justification for Biden’s performance was ‘a bad night’, as if the next day everything would return to normal. Second element: for the electoral mechanism it was far preferable that Joe Biden himself give up, therefore it was Biden himself who had to develop a level of awareness of his difficulties such as to have the strength to take a step back, with all the difficulty, even emotional, of giving up fighting what should have been his battle”.

On a medical level, “without having tests and reports available, we have no certainties – the psychiatrist specifies – but we can assume that we are faced with the condition that is defined in the medical world as Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), a condition of cognitive decline in elderly people that is not sufficiently marked to define a real disease, but significant enough to reduce daily functioning in a way that is clearly greater than the physiological decline typical of aging”. It is a condition that “typically worsens under cerebral or systemic stress: a sleepless night, the flu or other infection, the introduction of a new drug, dehydration due to the heat and so on. This explains its fluctuating course”.