The Dangerous Contagion of Donald Trump
A Public Mental Health Problem
I am frequently asked the question: “What is happening with George Santos? With Marjorie Taylor Greene? With Kevin McCarthy?” Before this, “What is happening with Herschel Walker? With Kari Lake?” We are so conditioned to confining our thinking to individuals, we have forgotten that mental phenomena are psychosocial. The pharmaceutical industry has aggressively pushed this, since describing psychosocial phenomena and preventing suffering go against its goal of selling more drugs.
When mental health experts warned against the threat to public mental health Donald Trump posed, the pharmaceutical industry-dependent American Psychiatric Association spread the disinformation that we were “diagnosing” (a private assessment of individual illness). While we would love to believe that Trump is an isolated individual who will hopefully soon be out of the political scene, we warned since 2017 that psychological dangers in a position of power and influence, without intervention, would soon translate into social, cultural, geopolitical, and civic dangers. We are seeing the expected results of no intervention.
We warned of a “shared psychosis,” whereby severe mental impairments in an influential figure would induce delusions in previously predisposed or even healthy individuals. Whether this spread of symptoms occurs in a criminal street gang, a family, a religious cult, or a nation—or whether it involves Joseph McCarthy, Jim Jones, Jair Bolsonaro, or “the Freedom Caucus”—the psychological dynamics are the same. When they occur at a massive scale, a collective shift happens so that unrelenting lies, deception, threats, intimidation, fear-mongering, corruption, and even sedition and treason come to be accepted as normal, if not desirable.
It is time for us to recognize that there is a rhyme and a rhythm to the repetitive pattern of “mini-Donald Trumps.” Whether or not we properly address it as a public mental health problem could determine the fate of our nation and our world.
At the same time we get control of the Donalds, can we please stop making them?? We know what creates Narcissism. We need to nurture babies and toddlers and help them learn to regulate themselves by co regulating them. This is a human requisite. If our society wants more mental health we need to support young families and help young parents to attach to their babies. If we subsidized early life the Heckmann equation suggests a 13% annual return on that investment.
I had concluded that the Freedom Caucus and other election deniers were simply acting out a role in order to maintain their political status. That they have been "infected" with Trump's mental illness helps to explain the situation.