‘Trump is mentally sick’

Renowned psychotherapists, intellectuals and media outlets are now unequivocally questioning mental fitness of President Donald Trump for his arrogant behaviour and activities.

They have raised the question a few months ago. The issue of Trump's mental illness came into sharper focus in the last week.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist tweeted Tuesday that President Donald Trump is “obviously mentally ill.”

Opinion of Krugman may not be given importance as he is not a psychotherapist and as the US Nobel laureate has been a vocal critic of Trump and his policy proposals.

But Krugman is not alone with such an opinion against a president, for the first time in the American history.

A number of renowned psychotherapists have said there is something psychologically wrong with President Trump.

Jhon D Gartner, a renowned registered psychotherapist from Johns Hopkins University Medical School, is one of them. Gartner says that Trump is one with a serious problem.

Gartner warned the “American public about the dangerousness of its new commander-in-chief’s mental state.”

"The fuzzy outlines of President Trump's likely mental illness came into sharper focus this week: in two interviews with major networks, he revealed paranoia and delusion; he quadruple-downed on his fabrication that millions of people voted illegally, which demonstrated he is disconnected from reality itself; his petulant trade war with Mexico reveals that he values self-image even over national interest; his fixation with inaugural crowd size reveals a childish need for attention," said  New York Daily News on January 29.

The Independent, UK daily, on January 30 in report titled "Malignant narcisissm': Donald Trump displays classic traits of mental illness, claim psychologists" said more and more mental health experts are sharing their diagnoses to warn the public.

The Citizen Therapists’ manifesto believes Trump’s egotistical ways are creating “the illusion that real Americans can only become winners if others become losers.” “Simply stated, Trumpism is inconsistent with emotionally healthy living,” said the Independent report.

Six months ago, The Atlantic, an American magazine, founded in 1857, however raised the crucial question whether Trump is a sociopath? 

In an article on July 20, 2016, The Atlantic quoted Steve Becker, a psychotherapist who specializes in Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Becker has written that “we’ve reached the point where we expect our politicians to behave like psychopaths.”

“Trump’s ‘psychopathy,’ incidentally, is expressive in a less ‘compartmentalized’ form than that of most candidates,” Becker writes, “meaning he’s really more than a ‘political psychopath’—he’s really just broadly, flat-out a psychopath.”

Three renowned professor of Psychiatry in last November wrote to then President Barack Obama to conduct ‘a full medical and neuropsychiatric evaluation’ on Donald Trump, president-elect.

"We are writing to express our grave concern regarding the mental stability of our President-Elect. Professional standards do not permit us to venture a diagnosis for a public figure whom we have not evaluated personally," the professors wrote in the letter.

"Nevertheless, his widely reported symptoms of mental instability — including grandiosity, impulsivity, hypersensitivity to slights or criticism, and an apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality — lead us to question his fitness for the immense responsibilities of the office" they asserted.

"We strongly recommend that, in preparation for assuming these responsibilities, he receive a full medical and neuropsychiatric evaluation by an impartial team of investigators."

On December 17, the Huffington Post published an article on the letter wrote to Obama by three professors.

Richard Greene, communication strategist, author of “Words That Shook The World” in the article said virtually every mental health professional he interviewed told him that they believed, with 100% certainty, that Trump satisfied the DSM criteria of this incurable illness and that, as a result, he is a serious danger to the country and the world.

USA Today raised an import question: what will happen if Trump loses his mind?

In an article on January 23, the daily said the verdict on Trump’s mental status, of course, will be out for some time.

"And it's conceivable that there is more method than madness here: The tweets and other headline grabbers could be well-calculated diversions in the service of an objective not yet apparent to those Trump watchers who do not comprehend his tactical brilliance."

"On the other hand, Trump's flabbergasting stream-of-consciousness address to the CIA suggests some degree of detachment from reality," said USA Today.

It says however close we are to a problem, presidential incapacity in a 70-year-old man will never be out of the question. It has certainly been an issue in America’s past, mostly from physical causes.

Trump's presidency however brought some good news for book publishers in USA as BBC in a report on January 29 says Trump has sparked a sales bonanza for publishers of dystopian fiction - as well as his own books on business success.

The reason is clear as Politicus USA in an article on January 28 said Trump’s narcissistic mental defect puts him in the same category as infamous tyrannical dictators like Muammar Gaddafi, Adolf Hitler, and Saddam Hussein.