THE DONALD’S MENTAL STATE
The man who wrote the book on psychiatric disorders — literally — has weighed in on the mounting claims that President Trump is a textbook narcissist.
His diagnosis: A bad case of misguided scrutiny.
“It’s very important to end the wild speculation — the wild, unfounded speculation,” Dr. Allen Frances, professor emeritus of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical College, told the Herald.
“We can’t protect the American democracy by attacking Trump on psychological grounds,” Frances said.
Frances was chairman of the task force that wrote the “DSM IV,” the psychiatric bible containing the criteria for mental disorders.
He made waves this week when he penned a letter to The New York Times, decrying the notion that Trump suffers from a diagnosable mental illness.
“Most amateur diagnosticians have mislabeled President Trump with the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder,” Frances said in his letter. “I wrote the criteria that define the real issues, Frances told the Herald.
“Trump represents a political challenge to the American democracy,” Frances said. “To attribute this to his psychological quirks is to underestimate the danger.”
Frances said while he will usually get around 20 re-tweets, his Twitter musings on this subject have gotten up to 6,000 — many from those who suffer from mental illness and are fed up with negative associations.
But the ethics of voicing a professional opinion are subjective, and every mental health professional is also a citizen, Dr. Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorder Program at Tufts Medical Center.
But Ghaemi acknowledged that the willingness to assign Trump psychological labels is a sign of the persisting stigma around mental illness.
“Psychological disorders are often seen in a discriminatory or in a negative light,” Ghaemi said. And ethics aside, “that’s a reason not to be throwing around diagnoses.” this disorder, and Mr. Trump doesn’t meet them.”
The president “does not suffer from the distress and impairment required to diagnose mental disorder,” Frances wrote in his letter.
Assessments of Trump’s mental state go against the American Psychiatric Association’s code of ethics, which deems it improper to give professional opinions about public figures in the absence of a formal evaluation.
But multiple speculations about Trump’s mental health have been made by both amateurs and seasoned psychiatrists. A letter from mental health professionals published in the Times — part of the motivation behind Frances’ decision to speak up — stated that Trump’s “grave emotional instability” make him an unfit leader.
But chalking Trump’s shortcomings up to psychological problems minimizes