As Donald Trump’s personality and behavior envelops the 24-hour news cycle, some experts have legitimately began to wonder about his mental health.
Now, TV’s favorite physician Dr. Drew Pinksy is taking that analysis further, wondering why Trump’s fans seem okay with the GOP nominee’s erratic behavior.
This Monday on CNN, Dr. Drew told anchor Don Lemon that although Trump didn’t necessarily fit the broader definition of insanity, he may be suffering from a variety of mental illnesses.
“There’s two definitions of sanity, one is legal definition, and that is somebody who is so out of it they don’t know the difference between right and wrong,” Pinsky said. “That is a very high standard for insanity — very few people meet that standard. When you’re legally insane, you’re really not functioning. Clinically, medically… usually when we talk about insanity, we mean psychotic, hearing voices, hallucinations.”
He then addressed Trump apparent narcissism.
“People want to label him with a narcissistic personality disorder, and that is a pretty tough, tough thing to do at a distance,” Pinsky said. “But let me just talk to you, narcissism generally can be a good thing. If you’re a fighter pilot, we want you to be narcissist, not to have fear in extreme circumstances. Most political leaders have some degree of narcissism, what motivates them to go into these areas. We’ve done research on this, (and) it bears that out.”
But Pinsky concluded that Trump’s fitness for office is questionable considering that he does exhibit certain signs of mental instability – specifically bi-polar disorder.
“When I hear people that are impulsive with their speech, I worry about hypomania and bipolar types of conditions,” Pinsky said. “As he says, he has boundless energy. Again, a little hypomania can be great. There are a lot of hypomanic businessmen that get a ton done. Containing your speech, be thoughtful, take a beat before you say something, for those people it can be very, very difficult.”
But it’s not Trump Pinksy is worried about, it’s his supporters.
“What’s more fascinating to me, Don, is not him but his supporters that seem to not be concerned about any of this,” Pinsky said. “That, to me, is fascinating. As always, what is up with us?”
“Let’s just assume that most people that would choose to be in a very high-profile race like this would have narcissistic tendencies, and there’s something called sort of narcissistic injury, then narcissistic rage,” Pinsky said. “If you injure — if you really shame somebody — they tend to be sort of teflon when it comes to shame. If you shame them, they can react with extreme aggression and extreme rage. So this seems to be that kind of a psychological process.”
Watch the clip below, via CNN:
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