A psychotherapist recently went on Fox News to discuss Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and described how many of his patients are suffering from the mental health condition.
Now he is receiving death threats, which shows that TDS is not only real but could be dangerous. Jonathan Alpert, a therapist and author, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he discussed how many of his patients cite President Donald Trump as one of the reasons they are experiencing mental health problems.
During a prior appearance on Fox News, he said about 75 percent of his patients suffer from the condition.
People are now upset with his comments, according to Fox News Digital:
Alpert shared with Fox News Digital several messages he said he received via text and email over the past week.
"Eat s--t and die you racist fascist piece of s--t… f--king uneducated MAGA scumbag," one message read.
"Pedophile protector," another said.
"You're a lowlife, worthless fraudulent piece of s--t pedophile who decent people hope is slaughtered, and the video is posted to YouTube," a third message read.
"It’s been intense," Alpert reacted to the messages, in an interview with Fox News Digital. "I expected disagreement, but I didn’t expect the level of hostility, especially from people in the mental health field."
"What has stood out is the contradiction," 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 his initial appearance on Fox News with host Harris Faulkner, he was asked about his experiences with patients suffering from TDS.
“So first of all, identify it for us. You're in a session, and you pick up on what?” Faulkner asked.
“Well, Harris, it doesn't take long for me to pick up on this. People are obsessed with Trump. They're fixated. They're hyper-fixated on Trump,” Alpert responded. “And they talk about some of the features of this disorder. They can't sleep. They feel traumatized by Mr. Trump. They feel restless. I had one patient who said she couldn't enjoy a vacation because any time she saw Trump in the news or on her device, she felt triggered. This is a profound pathology, and I would even go so far as to call it the defining pathology of our time.”
Alpert further explained that the president “is the trigger for many of these people” and that to be so obsessed with Trump is “simply not healthy.”
The therapist reaffirmed his claim that “three-quarters of my patients will present with a lot of these symptoms, and within probably five minutes of seeing me, their hatred for Trump comes up.”
It’s worth mentioning that Alpert is based in Manhattan, which means his comments are more than believable.
Faulkner asked whether other therapists could be exacerbating the problem. “When practitioners indulge their own biases, patients can become more anxious and depressed,” she said. “So you think this is working its way into your medical field?”
“My profession is a huge part of the problem,” Alpert said. “Therapists, the people who are supposed to be helping people, are actually dividing this country. If you go back a year ago, there was one psychiatrist who I actually told people on national TV, ‘If you don't like the way that your relative or friend voted, cut them out of your life.’ I remember COVID. That's not healthy. That's not how I would advise a patient at all.”
When asked about ways to treat TDS, Alpert said “it’s important to help them separate fact from fiction. So one of the big tasks that I have is to try to educate these patients and dispel a lot of their beliefs.”
The therapist continued, explaining, “Trump is not a Nazi. He’s not rounding up the gays and shipping them off to some far away land.”
“A lot of my time as a therapist is spent trying to correct these people’s beliefs,” he added.
Alpert pointed out that “the other problem is their echo chambers. These people are on social media, and they’re only surrounding themselves with one view. It’s important that they understand the full picture.”
When a president can actually cause mental health conditions, it shows how dangerous our political climate has become. If people legitimately suffering from mental health conditions because they don’t like the person in the White House, perhaps the government has become far too involved in our lives.