Post-Election Moral Family Planning for the Upcoming Holidays

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

We are 2 weeks away from the traditional American family holiday of Thanksgiving, to be followed a month later with the family-oriented holidays of Christmas and Hanukah. However, this year the immediate post-election period suggests an increasing threat to the cohesiveness of families and friendships. Simultaneously, we are in a liminal period of challenging transition over the next 2 months of changeover to a new Presidential administration.

Yesterday’s November 13 Free Press article by River Page titled “The Post-Election Sex Strike. Plus…” mentions some of the moral and ethical challenges to important relationships¹:

• A psychiatrist recommends cutting off contact with Trump-voting family members
• What has been called the Trump Derangement Syndrome, which implies undue criticism of President-elect Trump, may be increasing
• More women are swearing off men
• Democrats are buying more guns

If these trends continue, it will be more likely that members of a family or friendships with opposite political viewpoints either will not get together or have increased conflict if they do. Actually, such a trend has been escalating over recent years, as discussed in the July 17, 2024, New York Times article “Is Cutting Off Your Family Good Therapy?” by Ellen Barry.² It discussed a growing therapeutic movement called “The Relationship Recovery Process” whereby certain therapists overtly and rapidly recommend patients and the public breaking off any relationship with family due to presumed unresolvable trauma.

Others criticize this approach to breaking up families from an ethical standpoint because it imposes the values of the therapist and can result in the loss of emotionally important relationships, rather than trying to work through the conflicts in family therapy and other ways.

Similarly, collegial psychiatric relationships have been tested because of political differences. These are threats to the American Medical Association/American Psychiatric Association ethical priority of secondarily—after the primacy of patients’ needs—valuing collegial relationships. Here, divisiveness can trump cooperation.

In helping to edit 4 volumes on various religions and psychiatry for Springer, we encountered the challenges of working through who had the knowledge and power to make decisions of what should be covered and by whom. Over time, compassion, empathy, respect, and dignity confirmed the potential of added multi-cultural value rather than a simpler power struggle battle and scapegoating. If complementary social relationships are at the heart of broader social and political relationships, finding ways to celebrate the holidays together despite political differences and understandable despair for one side seems psychologically essential.

There are 2 weeks to prepare for the beginning of these holidays. A moral choice between close personal relationships and political values can complicate these matters. In a somewhat similar parallel national political process, the nominations for various Cabinet positions seem to be grappling with preferring personal relationships over relevant expertise for the position.

Perhaps morally and ethically speaking, in one situation personal relationships should take priority, while in another it is professional expertise. Can we as a society figure out now which should be which?

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 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.

References

1. Page R. The post-election sex strike. Plus… The Free Press. November 13, 2024. Accessed November 14, 2024. https://www.thefp.com/p/the-post-election-sex-strike-plus

2. Barry E. Is cutting off your family good therapy? The New York Times. July 14, 2024. Accessed November 14, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/health/therapy-family-estrangement.html