More than 200 experts say in an open letter that Trump has “malignant narcissism”
Kyiv • UNN
An anti-Trump group organized an open letter signed by 200+ mental health professionals about the danger of Trump as a leader. Experts claim that he has symptoms of a severe personality disorder.
An anti-Trump political group has organized a letter signed by more than 200 mental health professionals warning that Donald Trump is dangerous because of "his symptoms of a severe personality disorder that has no cure - malignant narcissism", making him "extremely unfit for leadership", The Guardian reports, UNN writes.
Details
Less than two weeks before the presidential election, the group bought a full-page ad styled as an open letter in the New York Times on Thursday, claiming that the Republican presidential candidate is an "existential threat to democracy" in the United States.
The ad was funded by Anti-Psychopath Pac, a political action committee that has released aggressive ads questioning Trump's mental fitness for office.
"Using the DSM V," or the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the main text that helps mental health professionals identify and treat mental disorders, ‘it is easy to see that Trump meets the behavioral criteria for antisocial personality disorder,’ the open letter says.
"Even a non-clinician can see that Trump has a lifelong history of 'failure to comply with social norms and laws,' 'repeated lies,' 'reckless disregard for the safety of others,' 'irritability,' 'impulsivity,' 'irresponsibility,' and 'lack of remorse,'" the letter says.
The publication also notes that the American Psychiatric Association considers it unethical to diagnose people whom a psychiatrist has not personally evaluated, a prohibition known as the Goldwater Rule.
The Anti-Psychopath Pac is led by George Conway, an attorney and activist best known for leading the Lincoln Project, a Republican group that was a thorny issue for Trump during his presidency but later collapsed amid sexual harassment allegations against one of its co-founders. Conway is divorced from Kellyanne Conway, Trump's senior adviser from 2016 to 2020.
Thursday's letter explicitly refers to the Goldwater Rule, stating that since its adoption in 1973, "the field has modernized the DSM diagnostic system to rely solely on 'observable behavioral criteria. Over the years, we have all observed thousands of hours of Trump's behavior, backed up by the observations of dozens of people who have interacted with him personally.
Professionals argued that the disorder they see in Trump "makes him lying, destructive, deceptive, and dangerous.
The letter also claimed that Trump was showing signs of cognitive decline and suggested that he should undergo a "full neurological examination." The letter was signed by a variety of people, from a Cornell University professor to professionals such as a Maryland psychotherapist, a nurse practitioner, a sexologist, and a social worker.
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After Joe Biden dropped out of the race due to concerns about his age and mental fitness for office, some of these scrutiny has begun to follow Trump, who, if elected, will be the oldest US president in history and will reach 82 years old by the end of his second term, the publication notes.
