A mental health professional makes a strong argument against diagnosing Trump.
'Bad behavior is rarely a sign of mental illness, and the mentally ill behave badly only rarely.'
Donald Trump is a narcissist and everybody knows it — at least in the colloquial sense of the term.
The 45th president of the United States built his brand on being self-absorbed, self-obsessed. He's the type of man who's spent the better part of the past several decades living in a gold tower with his name emblazoned on the outside. He's put his name on everything from steaks to board games to vodka. He's a real-life Narcissus, gazing into his own reflection. He is pride, he is arrogance, he is vanity.
To untrained observers, he's the embodiment of narcissistic personality disorder. And yet, at least one man thinks that we're not giving Trump enough credit — and he's perhaps one of the most qualified people to make that assessment.
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.
In a letter to The New York Times, Professor Allen Frances — who literally wrote the book the subject — offered a defense of Trump against claims that the president has narcissistic personality disorder.
The letter, titled "An Eminent Psychiatrist Demurs on Trump's Mental State," came in response to a letter the previous day signed by 33 mental health professionals who called for a lift on the American Psychiatric Association's 1973 Goldwater Rule against evaluating public figures. That letter argued that Trump suffers from a "personal myth of greatness" and "grave emotional instability" that makes him mentally unfit to serve as president.
In his letter in response, Frances explains that he personally wrote the criteria that defines narcissistic personality disorder as part of the team that wrote the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM-IV), and that Trump simply does not meet that criteria.
"He may be a world-class narcissist, but this doesn’t make him mentally ill, because he does not suffer from the distress and impairment required to diagnose mental disorder," wrote Frances.
Allen Frances. Photo by Angelika Warmuth/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images.
Frances cautions that by diagnosing Trump with NPD, or any other form of mental illness, from afar, we risk further stigmatizing people who live with mental illness.
"Mr. Trump causes severe distress rather than experiencing it and has been richly rewarded, rather than punished, for his grandiosity, self-absorption and lack of empathy. It is a stigmatizing insult to the mentally ill (who are mostly well behaved and well meaning) to be lumped with Mr. Trump (who is neither)," wrote Frances.
"Bad behavior is rarely a sign of mental illness, and the mentally ill behave badly only rarely."
"Bad behavior is rarely a sign of mental illness, and the mentally ill behave badly only rarely. Psychiatric name-calling is a misguided way of countering Mr. Trump’s attack on democracy. He can, and should, be appropriately denounced for his ignorance, incompetence, impulsivity and pursuit of dictatorial powers."
Psychoanalyzing Trump won't do anything to put a stop to what Frances calls "a dystopic Trumpean dark age." The solution, he argues, "is political, not psychological."
Donald Trump greets supporters after a rally in Mobile, Alabama, in 2015. Photo by Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images.
Stigma remains a big issue in the mental health and disability communities. Even if Trump does have a mental illness, it's probably not a worthwhile argument against his leadership.
David Perry, a journalist focused on disability rights, says he doesn't see any political benefit to trying to discredit Trump on the basis of perceived mental illness. To start, Perry explains, one has to work under the presumption that there are voters who are OK with someone who demonstrates questionable behavior — like lying, bragging about sexual assault, and being prone to outbursts, and all the other criticisms people have about Trump — but who would be be dissuaded from supporting that person only on the basis of mental illness.
"Does that voter exist?" Perry asks. "If so, isn't that a perfect example of using stigma — against 'crazy' people — to gain political advantage? It's possible that voter does exist, since such stigma is pretty pervasive, but I'm skeptical that Trump supporters are capable of being persuaded by anyone's internet diagnosis anyway."
Photo by Isaac Brekken/Getty Images.
Mental illness affects people all around us. That doesn't make them, as Trump might call them, "bad hombres."
"So I get it. ... We're going to speculate," says Perry. "But every person I know who has a mental disability finds that speculation painful, because it suggests that you might expect them to behave like Trump due to their diagnosis. So that matters to me."
Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, roughly 1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness in any given year. That's more than 43 million people. The problem, though, when it comes to mental illness, is that shame and stigma prevent many people from seeking care in a timely fashion. The truth is that when treated — whether that's with talk therapy, medication, exercise, diet, or something else — most forms of mental illness are pretty manageable.
Stigma makes seeking help a scarier process than it needs to be, so can we all agree not to add to it by trying to diagnose Trump from afar?
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
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An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.