A Manhattan psychotherapist says he has received a wave of hostile messages, including death threats, after publicly stating that some of his patients exhibit what he describes as “Trump derangement syndrome,” a psychological pattern marked by obsession and emotional instability related to President Donald Trump, as reported by Fox News.
Jonathan Alpert, author of the forthcoming book Therapy Nation, said the response intensified after he appeared on Fox News last week to discuss his Nov. 12 Wall Street Journal op-ed.
In the op-ed, Alpert wrote that “patients across the political spectrum” frequently bring up President Donald Trump in therapy sessions “not to discuss policy but to process obsession, rage and dread.”
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After the column circulated, Alpert said he began receiving hostile text messages and emails.
One message read, “Eat s — and die you racist fascist piece of s — … f — ing uneducated MAGA scumbag.”
Another said, “Pedophile protector.”
A third message read, “You’re a lowlife, worthless, fraudulent piece of s — pedophile who decent people hope is slaughtered, and the video is posted to YouTube.”
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“It’s been intense,” Alpert told Fox News Digital. “I expected disagreement, but I didn’t expect the level of hostility, especially from people in the mental health field.”
He added, “Many of the people who speak the most about empathy, tolerance, and inclusion reacted with the least of it. That reversal tells us something about how emotionally charged politics has become.”
During a Nov. 14 appearance on “The Faulkner Focus,” Alpert said the term “Trump derangement syndrome” describes a real psychological pattern he sees in his practice.
“This is a profound pathology, and I would even go so far as to call it the defining pathology of our time. People are obsessed with Trump. They’re hyper-fixated on him. They can’t sleep, they feel restless, they feel traumatized by Mr. Trump.”
He recalled one patient who struggled to enjoy a vacation because seeing Trump on television or on her phone left her feeling “triggered.”
Alpert estimates that roughly three-quarters of his patients show symptoms of what he describes as “TDS,” though he emphasized that it is not a medical diagnosis.
“Trump derangement syndrome is not a diagnosis,” he said.
“It’s not a way of labeling someone’s political beliefs as a mental illness. People can support or oppose Trump for all kinds of rational reasons. What I’m describing is an emotional pattern, not an ideology. It shows up when someone’s political feelings become so intense and consuming that they start to interfere with their daily life.”
Alpert said political emotions have intensified since Trump first took office in 2017. He noted that many people no longer separate disagreement from personal threat, and that the spread of therapeutic language has contributed to the problem.
“Instead of saying ‘I disagree,’ people say ‘I’m triggered’ or ‘I feel unsafe,'” he said. “Those words escalate everything. They frame the other person as dangerous rather than different, and they shut down discussion.”
He believes that views about Trump — both positive and negative — have become central to many people’s identity. “It stops being a political opinion and starts becoming a psychological stance,” he said.
Alpert said that when politics begins to affect sleep, mood, and relationships, it crosses into emotional preoccupation. He said his goal as a psychotherapist is to help patients “separate feelings from facts, learn to tolerate discomfort and prevent these emotions from running their lives.”
He also said he has received supportive messages from people who say they know someone affected by “Trump derangement syndrome.”
“Many patients are relieved to talk with someone who isn’t afraid to name what’s happening,” he told Fox News Digital.
Some in the mental health field have expressed caution about the term. In a letter published after Alpert’s op-ed, Baltimore psychiatrist Dr. Robin Weiss agreed that clinicians should help patients stay emotionally stable but argued that practitioners must also “document societal harm when we see it,” citing cases where political decisions threatened people’s livelihoods.
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