There should be a maximum age limit and required mental health evaluations for U.S. elected officials.
An overwhelming number of Americans approve of age limits for government officials at 79%. According to ThoughtCo., psychologists and some members of congress have expressed a need for mental health exams for candidates following the 2016 presidential election.
In 1994, President Jimmy Carter called for a panel of physicians who would evaluate the most powerful official in the United States. In the December 1994 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, President Carter wrote “Many people have called to my attention the continuing danger to our nation from the possibility of a U.S. president becoming disabled, particularly by a neurologic illness.”
While the number of people who don’t support age limits for government officials is far smaller, their reasons for doing so boil down to personal experiences and psychology. Just 20% of Americans oppose placing maximum age limits on U.S. officials.
People 60 and older are the main age group to say a president should be in their 70’s or older, which is only 3% of U.S. adults. Their opinion is heavily biased due to experiences with age-based discrimination and because they themselves are a part of that age group.
While opposition for required mental health evaluations isn’t widely common, those who hold this view do have science to help them out. Psychology Today did a study finding the age of mental illness onsets is younger than suspected, with the average age of onset across all disorders being 14.5 years. So, most mental illnesses onset before adulthood or adolescence.
However, this statistic is redundant when concerning a government elected official in his later years who is in a state of significant mental decline. During Trump’s first term, a mental evaluation was called by Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren, encouraging the Vice President to hire medical professionals to evaluate him.
The resolution stated, “President Donald J. Trump has exhibited an alarming pattern of behavior and speech causing concern that a mental disorder may have rendered him unfit and unable to fulfill his Constitutional duties.”
This could have had him removed by the House according to the 25th amendment, but nothing came of it. Now he is president again and the same age Biden was when he was first elected. It is absurd to have someone in power who potentially has a mental health issue which keeps him from effectively doing his Constitutional duty.
This is why we need required mental health evaluations for elected U.S. government officials.
According to Newsweek, if maximum age limits were in place, 71% of Senators would be outed. Only two presidents of the past 40 years would have been eligible as well, being Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Our government has become increasingly old on average and there needs to be a balance, as the U.S working population is younger than most of the elected officials at 61.36%. The average elderly population in the U.S. is just 16.53%.
Having maximum age limits for elected government officials would help level the age balance of those in power vs. the working population. Which in turn will help the country overall. Having required mental health evaluations for elected officials will also help the country as it would prevent people rising to power who aren’t able to make reasonable or logical decisions on heavy consequence matters on their own.
There is overwhelming support for maximum age limits and required mental health evaluations for elected U.S. government officials in the population’s opinion and it is backed by many psychologists and studies. The only thing stopping these reforms from being added to the constitution is the bias of the current elected officials in power and the high difficulty of changing the U.S. constitution.
A social change must take hold, along with action from the people, to see these reforms take effect and be added as a new amendment to the constitution.
