Manhattan Psychotherapist Says ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ is Real
“I had one patient who said she couldn’t enjoy a vacation because anytime she saw Trump in the news or on her device, she felt triggered”
Manhattan based psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert recently appeared on FOX News and confirmed that Trump Derangement Syndrome is a very real thing.
If he looks familiar, it’s because a few weeks ago, he provided some analysis about a particular demographic at the ‘No Kings’ protests.
In terms of TDS, Alpert not only says it’s real, he calls it the ‘defining pathology of our time.’
FOX News reports:
Psychotherapist says ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ is real pathology, plaguing 75 percent of his patients
During an interview with “The Faulkner Focus,” Alpert said patients have come into his office exhibiting symptoms of mental distress stemming from their fear or anger toward President Donald Trump.
“This is a profound pathology, and I would even go so far to call it the defining pathology of our time,” Alpert said.
TDS is a term generally used by Trump supporters to disparage what they view as hysterical or irrational critics of the president.
Alpert described some of the symptoms he’s observed in patients he believes are suffering from TDS.
“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. And they talk about some of the features of this disorder — they can’t sleep, they feel traumatized by Mr. Trump, they feel restless,” he said.
“I had one patient who said she couldn’t enjoy a vacation because anytime she saw Trump in the news or on her device, she felt triggered,” he added.
Alpert explained that for these patients, the mere mention or image of Trump triggers intense mental distress.
“And Trump is the trigger for many of these people, and to be that fixated on a figure, on a person, it’s simply not healthy,” he said.
Watch the video below:
NEW: Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert says that 75% of the patients he sees have a deep hatred for Trump and are "hyper fixated" on him.
"They can't sleep, they feel traumatized by Mr. Trump."
"I had one patient who said she couldn't enjoy a vacation because anytime she saw… pic.twitter.com/q4n3KMtzFV
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 14, 2025
Alpert recently wrote about the condition in a piece for the Wall Street Journal:
Is “Trump derangement syndrome” real? No serious mental-health professional would render such a partisan and derogatory diagnosis. Yet I’ve seen it in my own psychotherapy practice. Patients across the political spectrum have brought Donald Trump into therapy not to discuss policy but to process obsession, rage and dread. Their distress is symptomatic, not ideological.
Clinically, the presentation aligns with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders: persistent intrusive thoughts, emotional dysregulation and impaired functioning. Patients describe sleepless nights, compulsive news checking and physical agitation. Many confess they can’t stop thinking about Donald Trump even when they try. They interpret his every move as a threat to democracy and to their own safety and control.
Call it “obsessive political preoccupation”—an obsessive-compulsive spectrum presentation in which a political figure becomes the focal point for intrusive thoughts, heightened arousal and compulsive monitoring.
I initially viewed this as an ideological reaction, an understandable response to a polarizing figure. But over time the symptoms took on a more clinical shape. What once looked like outrage now presents as a fixation that distorts perception and consumes attention.
Can you even imagine what this guy has to listen to in his office every day?
Featured image via Twitter/X video.
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Comments
“Trump derangement syndrome is real”
Gosh, even a child knows that.
It doesn’t take much. Compare “Diana’s Death Resonates with Women in Therapy” by Jane Gross, NYT long ago back when it was a fun newspaper
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/13/nyregion/diana-s-death-resonates-with-women-in-therapy.html
“This is a profound pathology”
Headlines from 2015 or what?
What’s different about this disease is instead of treating the afflicted with compassion and medication, the Rx here is to derisively point and laugh at them yelling “This is MAGA country, baby!”
Zero f____ given.
The world is full of wackos.
That’s clearly an exaggeration. It’s not more than three fourths.
You’re quite the optimist, aren’t you?
I was at my optimist yesterday. Still don’t need glasses…
My grandma lived to be 103. She never needed glasses. Always drank straight from the bottle.
“Look, ‘scuse me for askin’, if it’s not a personal question, but are you a witch?” he said.
Anathema narrowed her eyes. So much for Mrs. Henderson poking around.
“Some people might say so,” she said. “Actually, I’m an occultist.”
“Oh. Well. That’s all right, then,” said Adam, cheering up.
She looked him up and down.
“You know what an occultist is, do you?” she said.
“Oh, yes,” said Adam confidently.
“Well, so long as you’re happier now,” said Anathema. “Come on in. I could do with a drink myself.
And . . . Adam Young?”
“Yes?”
“You were thinking ‘Nothin’ wrong with my eyes, they don’t need examining,’ weren’t you?”
“Who, me?” said Adam guiltily.
“Manhattan Psychotherapist” looks an awful lot like a Romney brother.
Of course TDS is real. You think Big Brother ran “Two Minute Hate” every day just to play with the cable access channel? Orwell knew the techniques, and the MSM knows them too.
The best psychiatric treatment for this is to follow the advice given by Bob Newhart in his television show skit “Stop It”. Just Google it; someday I will learn how to link in comments.
https://youtu.be/aAhA7KfbJgg?si=LQBJoE3P3cTM7cJQ
Oh yeah it’s real. John Francois Kerry pisses me off. Not to the extent described by TDS but quite a bit. Once I ran into him at a book store. I was there to peruse. He was there to flog his book ghostwritten by some poor schmuck. I had to leave. I felt such visceral anger triggered by the sight of him that if I didn’t walk out I’m positive I would have said or done something and probably would have been nabbed by security or the secret service. So TDS is very real and most of the suffers like DeNiro are delusional lunatics.
Ah yes, John F. Kerry. As I used to say, “the F stands for Halfwit”.
I’’m betting you’re a ‘Nam vet – THANK YOU!!! I’ve met many over the years. To say they despise
Kerry is an understatement. BUT…….they won’t go murder someone because of their feelings.
They won’t riot either.
You’d lose that bet. By the time I was 19 they were no longer drafting. I did get a lottery number though.
I’ve lived in MA for 30 years so I’ve been saddled with him. Worse I;ve been saddled with the stupid people who vote for him. Some voted for him because of the D. The worst ones were those who voted for him because of their convictions. Many of them were my workplace peers. smh.
I worry about these poor suffering women – er, people.. What will they do once President Trump has left the scene? They’ll be so lost without someone they can really hate.
Another blogger I frequent likes to remind us, “It’s you they want to kill. Trump’s just in the way.”
They’ll go back to hating men in general after smashing 50 different out-of-their-league 10s before hitting 30 wondering why not 1 would give them a commitment.
What does this mean? Trump supporters are also showing these symptoms?!
“Patients across the political spectrum.”
You know — from moderate to far ultra fringe moderate.
RINOs.
“They want us to think we are crazy, we are sane”
AOC
As the whites of her eyes expand tenfold.
While she strips a corn cob through a hurricane fence.
.
If you parse his title, it sounds like. sequel to a Hitchcock movie. Psycho: The Rapist!
If you’ve never seen SNL’s Jeopardy! with Sean Connery, look it up.
I am a psychologist and I have seen this too. Clients with OCD often tend to obsess over morality and just hearing a single world they feel is not morally correct can send them to a compulsion which can be avoidance or obsessively thinking about something to cancel out the supposed immorality. Or some other compulsion like having to do an action repeatedly , checking , etc etc. Keep in mind anxiety disorders are not rationale and often people lack insight into their own behavior. OCD is vastly under diagnosed because of the lack of insight issue as many people who have it don’t think they are doing anything unusual.
“just hearing a single world they feel is not morally correct can send them to a compulsion … like having to do an action repeatedly”
So if you lock them in a room with a Tourette’s sufferer, you get perpetual motion? Neeeeet!
Just recently had to let an employee go. They became so unfit to work due to an OCD incident, that their doctor could not release them to co.e back to work. An otherwise perfectly capable adult self destructed themselves out of a job.
They would qualify for disability, both from a company provided plan (although likely only for 2 years) and SSDI.
So tempting to send this article to friends and family. I can only be disowned once anyway.