You get the feeling President Biden is 'almost just holding on': Psychiatrist

now i i want to clear up something now it's usually said like a cheap shot you know politics joe biden's got dementia the oldest u.s president in history is losing it but i reckon this issue is really too serious to treat like that because i actually want to know i know i want to know so what if he has if the leader of the free world does have dementia how big an issue is it all right perhaps just taking a few grabs a few dozen pieces of video of bad and brain fades out of context pieces video like this one so the best way to get something done if you if it holds near and dear to you that you like to be able to anyway i'm we're going to get a lot done now this all came to a hit for me last week when joe biden did an hour-long question answer on cnn now for a lot of the time and i don't think people have been fair on this point there was no real trouble no real trouble he was answering fluently for him but you couldn't ignore moments like these for instance answers to simple questions like when will children under 12 get vaccinated and i've heard you speak about it because you always i'm not being solicitous but you you're always straight up about what you're doing and the question is whether or not we should be in a position where you uh um are why can't the the the experts say we know that this virus is in fact uh um uh is it it's going to be uh or assuming we we know why all the drugs approved are not temporarily approved but permanently approved that doesn't seem quite right to me but let's ask an expert joining me is psychiatrist and author tanvir ahmed tanvir it's great to catch up look i know that you can't diagnose someone just from a few video clips you need the full range of tests and all that kind of thing but looking at grams like that and others that we've run over the last year or two do you see anything that makes you think well something is not quite right look i think it's absolutely reasonable to raise concerns i mean i mean it's understandable age 77 the oldest president these concerns would be raised i mean similar thing was raised when reagan uh was in power some of the key early signs of dementia andrew is short-term recall losing track of your thoughts and we're seeing very some key examples there sometimes just what's called confabulating where they're almost making up stories and and joe biden actually has a history of that in recent years on the campaign trail he talked about deals he'd done or trips he'd made overseas while uh while as a as a member as a representative and he just didn't do them at all like sometimes they're well before he was even in congress or that he was in a supposed position he refers to kamala harris as president sometimes there's so so he definitely shows some signs of short-term memory loss confabulation and look he does have a bit of history just thinking about his medical history he's had two blood aneurisms um uh 20 odd years ago just over 20 odd years ago now that suggests he may have some vascular disease now his physician did see him a couple of years ago and gave him a clean bill of health uh he also has some acid reflux which sometimes uh um explains his hoarse voice he gets that too but look i think it's perfectly if once you're over at the age of 75 andrew almost one in five people have some signs of early dementia and with joe biden you definitely get you know i don't think it's unreasonable to ask the question now it could be the debate is is this what's known as benign senescence which is really it's a bit of ageism but it's ages of grounded in fact that as you age you can just get little bouts of uh short-term memory loss but as long as it's not sustained you can say okay now you've still got a clean bill of health i mean the other problem um with joe biden is you know it's it is probably steadily getting worse in um in the last sort of 12 18 months and that is a feature of dementia where you're kind of seeing a steady gradual decline so there's some big questions i i don't think it's unreasonable to raise these questions we should give a bit of a historical background but but what i asked you too then is so what i mean look you know to underline i am taking clips from interviews where for the most part there's no problem at all right it's talking fine and then suddenly boom the memory goes so what is actually the problem eve like with early dementia for instance you know are you actually fine is your judgment still perfectly okay once you get back your train of thought you know you recollected oh yeah that's where i was going or are you really not quite up to the job it depends what stage of it is it the early signs can be short-term memory loss but also really in terms of trying to take in the complex concepts and taking large amounts of information which the president wouldn't be expected to do that would be extremely difficult for him i mean he was able to sit through get through some of the debates through whether it be bernie sanders and through the sort of democratic campaign and obviously later trump so he sort of just hung in there so you get the feeling he's almost just holding on which can be a feature of dementia where as long as you've got enough people supporting you you can sort of just hold on and i think there's a bit of that going on with the joe biden it'll become clearer probably in the next 12 18 months i do think if there was clear signs of dementia you'd probably see his inner brass you know sitting within meetings all day etc kamala harris and some of his closest aides i think would become very clear to them uh fairly rapidly and you may well see some leaking i mean you can imagine kamala harris you know should be uh in prime conditioning oh don't even go stop terrifying my audience there danville i don't think we're ready to even contemplate that yet but you're quite you're quite right i think it's also interesting they've limited his engagements to about one a day which is a very light load but uh anyway we shall see tanvir ahmed thank you so much for your time pleasure thanks andrew

Channel: Sky News Australia

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Id: aOsEHBc2nTM

Length: 6min 15sec (375 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/greyfalcon333]

You get the feeling that US President Joe Biden is almost "just holding on," according to Psychiatrist and Author Dr Tanveer Ahmed.

"Which can be a feature of dementia," Dr Ahmed told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.

"Where, as long as you've got enough people supporting you, you can sort of just hold on".

"And I think there's a bit of that going on with Joe Biden".

"It will become clearer probably in the next 12 to 18 months".