As anyone can see when they have watched Biden speak he makes some errors in speech. This being said he just may fall into the domain of Neurocognitive Disorders. The caveat must be said I am in no way making a diagnosis as was stated before regarding Trump. You can’t make a judgement by what you see on tv alone. That is unprofessional and also unethical according to a therapists or psychologists code. However, one can legitimately speculate as a therapist/psychologist as to what we would investigate if given the clinical opportunity and that is what I am doing here. That being said the neurocognitive domains of which a person may have decline to be diagnosed with Mild Neurocognitive Disorder are as follows:

Complex Attention

Executive Functioning

Learning and Memory

Language

Perceptual Motor

Social Cognition

The one that stands out for me given that I actively avoid watching him speak is Language. He has trouble it appears in finding the appropriate words which is what the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5-TR (DSM-5-TR) indicates is indicative of a Mild Neurocognitive Disorder in the language domain. This means it does not necessarily interfere on a daily basis of functioning of which is required for most DSM-5-TR diagnoses. Instead it simply needs to be a noticeable decline. This is definitely the main diagnosis I would investigate given the one on one clinical intervie.

Two ancillary points I would like to make. It is strictly just my opinion that a person running for presidency should have their full medical/psychological/criminal history completely open to the public. They (since I am a psychologist) should have at least two psychologists do a full neuropsychological assessment done including numerous psychological tests of course medical as well. Yes, to most people think this should all be kept under the concept of medical confidentiality and HIPPA, however I personally and again my opinion only be open to the public since they are in such a position of power.

Also, and I spoke with someone close to me who indicated of which I agree there should be an upper limit as to the age of which a person can even become president. This individual indicated being out of touch with younger people of which I totally agree. Yet the point still stands if we have a minimum arbitrary age of 35 why don’t we have an upper limit? To me this makes absolutely no sense to have a minimum age yet no maximum. I had a friend in college who was far more knowledgeable at 18/19/20 than most adults I knew in their 50’s regarding politics and international relations. He constantly talked politics and was talking over my head always when he brought up politics. Why not a cap on an upper age?

All people will suffer some sort of cognitive decline as we age with few exceptions. I am therefore not attacking Biden or Trump for that matter, it’s just that when you start getting into that age on a continuum there will be decline compared to a 20 something year old person.