Trump Derangement Syndrome Signals Mass Hysteria, Experts Urge Reform

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s offhand comment about giving “Trump Derangement Syndrome” an ICD code set off a familiar argument: is this a private psychiatric problem or a social epidemic? This piece argues it’s the latter, a kind of mass hysteria stoked by media and cultural institutions, and explains why treating individuals won’t stop the contagion. The remedy has to start with the systems that manufacture and reward outrage.

Last week Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. told podcaster Adam Carolla he had even thought about formally classifying Trump Derangement Syndrome with an ICD code, and the line landed because it captures a real, visible phenomenon. He was answering a joke about a hypothetical TDS vaccine, but the point was serious: this is not just a private quirk; people in his own circle are showing the signs. That’s worth noticing whether you laugh or wince.

Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert has been blunt about what he sees in his practice, especially among liberal Manhattan clients. “This is a profound pathology, and I would even go so far to call it the defining pathology of our time,” Alpert told Fox News Digital last year. He added, “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,” he continued. “And they talk about some of the features of this disorder. They can’t sleep. They feel traumatized by Mr. Trump. They feel restless.”

Kennedy and Alpert are right that the behavior exists, but wrong to treat it as purely an individual mental illness you can fix with a pill or weekly therapy session. This looks less like isolated pathology and more like classic mass hysteria, where anxiety and obsession spread through social channels rather than originating inside one skull. When the environment keeps shouting the same alarm bells, the symptoms multiply.

Mass hysteria matters because it changes how you respond. A vaccine or a single therapist won’t stop a cultural contagion that’s constantly being fed and rewarded. The real vectors are public: cable shows, late-night comedy, opinion columns, and social feeds that amplify every outrage into an existential crisis. Treating people one by one misses the disease’s transmission route.

Look for the patterns. Those caught up in this frenzy tend to talk about the same symptoms: persistent obsession, loss of sleep, a feeling of trauma tied to one political figure, and in extreme cases, cutting off friends and family. The media landscape normalizes and even lauds those breakups when they’re framed as moral stands, turning private ruptures into social currency. That normalization accelerates the spread.

Donald Trump has been recast into a modern bogeyman, magnified until he seems omnipresent and omnipotent. The bogeyman image isn’t new; it’s a story device used to terrify generations, but now it’s being used on adults. When stories, jokes, and punditry keep repeating that a single person threatens the republic, anxiety metastasizes into collective panic.

Social platforms and algorithms make everything worse by rewarding the most extreme reactions with clicks and visibility. Think pieces and viral videos urging people to sever ties with Trump supporters are sold as ethical imperatives, and that framing makes personal estrangement feel righteous instead of tragic. The contagion feeds on moral certainty and on the industries that profit from it.

So what breaks the cycle? It starts with the institutions that produce and amplify hysteria diagnosing themselves. Media outlets and opinion leaders have to stop treating every routine political move as the apocalypse and stop incentivizing endless panic. Until the producers of the panic change their calculus, the cultural infection will keep finding new hosts.