The Goldwater rule is the eponymous rule established by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in Annotation 7.3 of American Medical Association's (AMA) code of ethics. Section 7 of AMA's Principles of Medical Ethics states that medical doctors have a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health. As a subsection therein, Annotation 7.3 (also known as "Goldwater rule") is addressed to psychiatrists and mandates that, when asked to comment on public figures, they shall refrain from diagnosing, which requires a personal examination and consent. It is named after former U.S. Senator and 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, who had been the subject of a diagnostic poll of psychiatrists in a 1964 edition of Fact magazine.
Creation The issue arose in 1964 when Fact magazine published "The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater", a play on the title of Goldwater's bestseller The Conscience of a Conservative. The magazine polled psychiatrists about Goldwater and whether he was fit to be president. Goldwater sued magazine editor Ralph Ginzburg and managing editor Warren Boroson, and in Goldwater v. Ginzburg (July 1969) received compensation of $75,000 ($658,000 today).
Description American Medical Association's first issue of the Principles of Medical Ethics was published in 1847. Its 2001 revision is still in effect as of 2026, wherein Section 7 says:
A physician shall recognize a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health. The American Psychiatric Association adopted AMA's Principles and, in 1973, published the version Principles of Medical Ethics With Annotations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry, to which the Goldwater rule was added as a subsection ("Annotation 7.3"). Its 2013 edition reads:
On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement. The prohibition stated in Annotation 7.3 is often taken out of context of the public health obligations of Section 7.
Similar ethical codes in different organizations
American Psychological Association The APA Ethics Code of the American Psychological Association (same acronym but a different organization from the American Psychiatric Association) does not have a similar rule explicitly defined in its code of ethics. Instead, the APA suggests that various statements made in different parts of its Ethics Code would apply to cases of the diagnosis of a public figure. In 2016, in response to the New York Times article "Should Therapists Analyze Presidential Candidates?", American Psychological Association President Susan H. McDaniel published a letter in The New York Times in which she offered her opinion and interpretation of the current Ethics Code:
Similar to the psychiatrists' Goldwater Rule, our code of ethics exhorts psychologists to "take precautions" that any statements they make to the media "are based on their professional knowledge, training or experience in accord with appropriate psychological literature and practice" and "do not indicate that a professional relationship has been established" with people in the public eye, including political candidates. When providing opinions of psychological characteristics, psychologists must conduct an examination "adequate to support statements or conclusions". In other words, our ethical code states that psychologists should not offer a diagnosis in the media of a living public figure they have not examined.
American Medical Association The American Medical Association, which initially pressured the American Psychiatric Association to include the Goldwater rule after actively supporting Barry Goldwater in 1964, wrote new guidelines into the AMA Code of Medical Ethics in the fall of 2017, stating that physicians should refrain "from making clinical diagnoses about individuals (e.g., public officials, celebrities, persons in the news) they have not had the opportunity to personally examine".
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