A Manhattan psychotherapist claimed on Fox News Sunday that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is a real “mental health epidemic” that’s disrupting peoples’ lives.
The phrase, often shortened to “TDS,” is used by Donald Trump and his supporters to describe anyone they think is hyper-fixated on the president’s actions and ultimate demise.
Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert told Peter Doocy on The Sunday Briefing that, although TDS is not a recognized diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association, “I am deeply, deeply concerned about what I’ve been seeing…for almost 10 years now.”
“We see great division in families and friendships broken up over how strongly they feel about Trump,” Alpert said. “What I’m seeing is symptoms that in many ways mirror other disorders. People are anxious, they’re angry, they can’t sleep. One person even said she couldn’t possibly enjoy a family vacation as long as Trump is out there. So these are hallmark features of any disorder that I treat every day of the week, and we should really be concerned about this.”
Alpert explained what he saw as the difference between Trump critics and those who despised former President Joe Biden.
“I had patients who hated Joe Biden, but it never rose to the point where they wanted him dead or would stay up at night, obsessing over Joe Biden the way that
Alpert said that Trump “dominates probably about three-quarters of the sessions” he has with patients, and his approach is to help them to understand “what’s fact and what isn’t.”
“If you think that Trump is going to round up the gays and send them off to an island, or if you think that Trump is a Nazi — look, these things are not proven, they’re not fact at all,” Alpert said.
Watch the clip above via The Sunday Briefing on Fox News.