Kerry Eleveld: Psychiatrist warns Trump may be ‘at significant risk for deteriorating into full-blown psychosis
Donald Trump’s verbal
outbursts and Messianic claims of being “the second coming” and “the chosen
one” have once again reignited a controversy over just what exactly is wrong
with the pr*sident of the United States. Not only did he compare himself to
Jesus several times in a single day, Trump also had a lot of trouble with the basic enunciation of words like “obstacle” and
“applicable,” called the prime minister of Denmark “nasty” for declining to
sell Greenland to the U.S., and declared all Democratic American Jews
“disloyal to Israel.”
Whatever Trump’s
diagnosis, it’s particularly bleak and dangerous that this man is running the
country and in possession of the nuclear codes, among other forms of recourse.
Still, people are debating whether Trump is actually psychotic or
narcissistic with delusions of grandeur or perhaps suffering from rabid
dementia eating away at his brain and making him particularly irritable.
One mental health
professional and contributor to the updated version of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump argued
Wednesday that Trump isn’t technically psychotic. “Trump is
narcissistically irrational & grandiose w paranoid traits. His reality is
defined by how he feels, not objective facts (“impressionistic
thinking’),” tweeted Dr. David Reiss. But according to the
psychiatric diagnostic manual known as the DSM, Trump is not psychotic. “He is
dangerously racist, impulsive, irrationally self-centered; not clinically
psychotic,” Reiss concluded.
That said, later in
the tweet thread, Reiss added, “he is (at least theoretically) at significant
risk for deteriorating into full-blown psychosis.”.. read more:
https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/psychiatrist-warns-trump-may-be-at-significant-risk-for-deteriorating-into-full-blown-psychosis/