Treat Mental Illness With Respect

Mental illness, in all it's varied forms, is a horrible disease. It brings at least discomfort, and in many cases actual danger, to both the diseased persons and those around them. In modern societies we have for the most part learned to treat the afflicted with respect; we don't mock them, or tease them, or poke fun at them or their families. We try to be quietly supportive, lending whatever help we can with our very limited understanding.

In the past months, there have been an increasing number of commentators suggesting that our President, Donald Trump, is either mentally ill or is at least a borderline case. This diagnosis has been offered by all sorts of people who don't really have any qualifications; Senators, TV and radio pundits, social media raiders, and even some qualified psychiatrists. The most frequently offered diagnosis is "malignant narcissism", which itself is a little-understood syndrome. The four elements of this disease are  narcissism, paranoia, antisocial personality and sadism. We can clearly see that President Trump exhibits all four of those. (Note that there are professionals who also say that, while Trump certainly shows those characteristics, they don't rise to the level of mental illness)

But what are we to do? My first (and only) recommendation is that we all quit talking about it, and quit talking about Donald Trump in general. Ever since he entered the Presidential race in June of 2015, we have been obsessed with every word, every tweet, ever imagined slight, and every piece of evidence of his imbalance. This is harmful for two reasons:

First, all the attention we are giving Trump is simply feeding the beast. To a narcissist, even criticism is joy. As long as he can focus the nation's attention on anything he does, there's little reason for him to change any of his behaviors regardless of how toxic they may be.

Second, in fairness, mental illness should not be our daily entertainment. When someone is cracking up before our eyes, we shouldn't be riveted to our TVs and computer screens feeding our dark places with the by-products of a terrible disease.

Let's all go on a Trump fast. His cabinet and associates will provide us plenty of interesting stories of corruption and poor policies for the next several months. Let's let Donald and his family have some peace.

(Full disclosure: I am one of the worst offenders. This is as much my confession and contrition as it is a call for decency.)

Image  Johann Anwander [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons