The Trump Contagion

The phenomenon of contagion is what mental health experts have warned against since their 2017 monograph, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. They stated that, if his presidency were not intervened with swiftly and properly, his symptoms — his pathology, criminality, and violence — would spread and become uncontainable. In March 2020, the first month of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in the United States, they issued a “Prescription for Survival,” to highlight how his removal, or at least removal of his influence, was mandatory for survival. They noted that the more important, underlying pandemic to gain control over was “the mental health pandemic,” or his compromise of the nation’s collective mental health. The latter was the more infectious, since it required only emotional bonds, not physical exposure, to take hold and was responsible for vastly exacerbating the former.

Poor mental health also contributes to denial, and therefore those who are the most affected are the least likely to admit that anything is wrong. Bioterrorism is frightening, but psychological warfare even more so, for it hijacks the very mind that is capable of protecting itself. Over 1 million deaths later, we are still having trouble holding the primary culprit for mass death accountable, or even in naming him.

As a social psychiatrist, my focus has been on ecology, and on Donald Trump as a public health phenomenon. Contagion of mental symptoms is common in public hospital and prison settings, where there are high concentrations of untreated, severe mental disturbances. Severe…