The first time I saw #DiagnoseTrump, I felt a dizzy, sinking feeling. It seemed like a natural extension of the ongoing rampant speculation about whether Donald Trump is too “crazy” to be president — hashtags or it didn’t happen, am I right? But it got even worse when a press release popped up in my inbox and I discovered that it was pegged to a Change.org petition written by California Representative Karen Bass (D). According to the Hill, Bass, who worked in the mental health field prior to her election, says that he’s displaying symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and calls on mental health professionals to demand that the GOP conduct a mental health evaluation of their candidate.
The rhetoric over whether something is “wrong with” Donald Trump has really escalated in the last week, between his bizarre battle with the Khan family, his fight with a baby, and a variety of other activities. His seemingly erratic, inexplicable, and troubling behavior seems to have ramped up since the RNC, as though once he secured the nomination, he could do whatever he liked.
Every time I log onto Twitter, there are people armchair diagnosing Trump with a slew of psychiatric conditions. Personality disorders are popular, but so is sociopathy, an incredibly poorly understood diagnosis that tends to get slapped at random on people who do things other people don’t like. I’m not going to lie: It hurts.
I was misdiagnosed with a personality disorder in my teens, and I’m seeing that diagnosis thrown around a lot. I see my actual diagnosis making some headway, too. “But we don’t mean you,” people say when I call them on it. “We mean actual crazy people.”
In attributing something to “mental illness,” people act as though it’s something innate. It can’t be helped. It’s just the way someone is. That person is irredeemable. And no sane or reasonable person would behave that way.
Well, guess what: I’m an actual crazy person, and you need to stop it. You can’t arbitrarily declare that people who do things you don’t like are crazy, as though their actions can just be neatly dismissed. This is a problem that’s been occurring more and more lately, with laypeople rampantly labeling anyone who does something horrific as “crazy.”

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