Donald Trump’s behavior is so far outside the norm that many people (including mental health professionals) have suggested that he is mentally ill. The most common suggestions I’ve seen are that he suffers from narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial personality disorder (ASPD, also known as sociopathy), or a combination of the two (known as malignant narcissism). There is also widespread concern about cognitive decline.
I looked up the diagnostic criteria for NPD and ASPD, and it’s shocking how many of the boxes Trump ticks. Here are the criteria for NPD according to the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual, the DSM-5-TR:
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (301.81 [F60.81])
Diagnostic Criteria
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
- Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).
- Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
- Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).
- Requires excessive admiration.
- Has a sense of entitlement (i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations).
- Is interpersonally exploitative (i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends).
- Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.
- Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.
- Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.
I would argue that Trump meets all 9 of those criteria. Only 5 are required for an NPD diagnosis.
Here are the criteria for ASPD:
Antisocial Personality Disorder (301.7 [F60.2])
Diagnostic Criteria
A. A pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others, occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:
- Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest.
- Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure.
- Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead.
- Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults.
- Reckless disregard for safety of self or others.
- Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations.
- Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
B. The individual is at least age 18 years.
C. There is evidence of Conduct Disorder with onset before age 15 years.
D. The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of Schizophrenia or a manic episode.
I’d say that Trump meets all of the numbered criteria except #4. Only 3 are needed for an ASPD diagnosis. He’s certainly irritable and aggressive, but I haven’t heard reports of any physical altercations. He meets criteria B and D, but I don’t know enough about his early life to comment on criterion C, which is Conduct Disorder.
Anyway, the point is not whether Trump would qualify for a formal diagnosis. Diagnosis or no, any person who meets that many criteria for both NPD and ASPD is manifestly unfit for office.
Cross-posting from another thread since it’s relevant to Trump’s psychology:
Allan:
He’s lining up donors to pay for it, so the taxpayers won’t be footing the bill. Which is worse in my opinion, since he’s so corrupt and easily bought. The two donors I know about are Google and RJ Reynolds.
He’s so obsessed with gold that in the White House, even the TV remote is gilded. I’m not kidding.
A look at what it says about him:
A Psychologist Reveals What Trump’s Fixation with Gold Really Means
As if his other offenses weren’t bad enough, we have to endure the tacky Oval Office backdrop every time he hosts a meeting there.
His tastelessness even extends to food. He likes his steaks well done and puts ketchup on them. His former butler said “It would rock on the plate, it was so well done.”
ETA: A photo I took in Sandpoint, Idaho:

A perfect example of Trump’s corruption as well as his obsession with gold:
Trump Watches 2024 – Only $100,000
They’re selling these right now. Can you imagine Obama hawking $100,000 gold and diamond-encrusted watches? While in office?
There’s an entire line, including an ugly “Fight Fight Fight Red Beauty” model for $500.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner will be announced in a few hours, and the world is bracing for a tantrum from the Toddler in Chief if he doesn’t win it. Norway in particular:
Norway braces for Trump’s reaction if he does not win Nobel peace prize
Think about how pathetic it is that anyone anywhere in the world actually has to worry about that. Try to imagine Biden, Obama, Bush or Clinton throwing a tantrum after being passed over for a Nobel. It’s impossible. They aren’t toddlers, and they all understood that being President requires a modicum of dignity.
Not Trump. With him, it’s easily imaginable.
The Nobel debacle is amusing. I’m not so sure Obana should have received it, certainly not in his first year, but Trump would be ineligible given nominations close in January. To say nothing of his aggression towards Greenland and Denmark, his troops on the streets against the wishes of local authorities, his weakness with Putin and Netanyahu.
What’s funny is his ceaseless campaigning for it. It’ is unseemly. Bringing peace should be its own reward. But it’s the measure of the man that he wants a trinket and praise, and his fans are apoplectic on his behalf, which raises a smirk. I am a small, small man in many ways! Cope harder, as right-wingers are fond of saying.
Nobel committee has acknowledged that giving the prize to Obama was a mistake of historic proportions. Also the track record of prizes related to Palestine conflict is very bad, lots of people of all sorts on all sides getting those prizes, but still no lasting peace, so the committee is cautious with regard to Palestine.
However, they still ended up half-giving the prize to Trump by giving it to Venezuelan opposition leader whose main activity is to invite Trump to invade Venezuela. Yet another flawed decision, to put it mildly.
Erik:
Trump says they talked and that she told him he should have won. She understands, like everyone else in the world except for Trump himself, that the way to manipulate him is to flatter him.
To what end does she manipulate Trump? According to New York Times,
This goes far beyond mere flattering. This Nobel Peace Prize laureate encourages Trump to engage in more war crimes because it is “saving lives” and she promises to give Venezuela’s oil to Trump if Trump helps her to power.
But yeah, maybe the Norwegian Nobel committee also understands that the way to manipulate Trump is to flatter him, and it is always a good idea to manipulate…
This thread has mostly been about Trump’s evident personality disorder(s), but his cognitive decline is also worth discussing. He posted this on Truth Social yesterday:

“Biden’s FBI”? Trump had been president for four years on January 6. It was Trump’s FBI.
Off the top of my head, I also remember these:
— He forgot that he appointed Jerome Powell
— Regarding the USMCA, he asked “Who would ever sign a thing like this?”, forgetting that he was the one who signed it
— He confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi
— In one meeting, he was looking around the room for a man who was sitting right in front of him
— He claimed that his uncle taught Ted Kaczynski, which is impossible
— He forgot the name of an ocean during an interview on Fox
— He has claimed more than once to have ended a war between Azerbaijan — which he can’t pronounce — and Albania. Armenia, not Albania, is the country that Azerbaijan was fighting
— He couldn’t pronounce “acetaminophen” during his autism/Tylenol debacle
— He forgot that he never ran against Obama
— He thought that Obama was in office in 2023, not Biden
Add to these his inability to speak coherently and maintain a train of thought, plus his weird and erratic behavior.
As Madeleine Dean said (and Mike Johnson agreed) Trump is “unhinged” and “unwell”. He’s also President. Thanks, Trump voters.
keiths,
What’s remarkable about the ‘FBI’ story is how readily MAGAs are swallowing it. Even when you directly show them that Trump was in charge then. They’re pretty much admittimg to being pathetically easily led, if an FBI agent or Antifa can get them to riot (yet the guy saying “fight like hell” had nothing to do with it). One guy saying “I went to prison for this scam”, though he pled guilty and offered no defence of entrapment. The FBI made me break the law. Cognitive dissonance at its finest.
Trump:
He’s absolutely right, provided you can walk (or run) on water at a speed of over 400,000 mph.

If it says so on Fox News, it must be so. After all, Fox News never said it wasn’t true…
Here’s a nice example of Trump’s narcissism. Time put Trump on its cover in celebration of the Israel-Gaza peace agreement:

This was Trump’s reaction on Truth Social:
A normal person would be chuffed to have their picture on the cover of Time, and while they might not like the photo — and Trump’s portrait is ugly — they’d shrug it off and enjoy the moment. They certainly wouldn’t whine about it.
But this is Trump, and the cover photo wounded his vanity, and so suddenly that is the important issue. Me, me, me — “Why didn’t I get the Nobel?” “Why didn’t anyone thank me for the food aid?” “Why did they use a photo that makes me look ugly?” “Why didn’t they give me credit for warning about bin Laden before 9/11? [which he didn’t do.]
Trump’s Time-related narcissism goes back a long way. During his 2016 presidential campaign, it was discovered that he had hung a phony Time magazine cover in several of his golf clubs:

One glance and you can tell it’s a fake. No editor would approve a cover that shitty. On a real Time cover, there would be no exclamation points. Instead of
it would either read
since “The” is part of the name of the show, or they would have used italics and left off the quote marks.
Also, a real cover would not spell it as “Health-Care”.
Here we have a guy who is so pathologically narcissistic and insecure that he feels the need to fake a Time magazine cover and hang it all over the place, in hopes that it will make people admire him. A guy who isn’t smart enough to find a competent person to do the faking for him and doesn’t run it past other competent people to make sure it looks genuine.
Imagine there were a guy in your social circle who hung fake awards in his office and on the walls of his home. You’d think that was pathetic, right? (I remember that in addition to the fake Time cover, there was also some sort of “Man of the Year” award in Michigan that Trump claimed to have won. That award doesn’t exist. Trump made it up.) You and your friends would laugh at the guy behind his back for being so narcissistic, or you might pity him for his insecurity. Yet MAGA cult members manage to look past it when it’s their Dear Leader doing those things. It’s a true blindness.
ETA:

Gavin Newsom trolled Trump with this version of the photo, lol:
He has a point.
Trump:
He actually believes that. Can you imagine trying to navigate life, much less the presidency, with a brain that defective? If Trump didn’t have staff to take care of him, could he even survive on his own?
I’ve commented before on how Trump’s cheating at golf, while a minor thing in itself, is scary because it reflects the kind of person he is — insecure, dishonest and lacking in conscience. Here’s Sam Harris reflecting on how it reveals Trump’s psychopathology:
This Is Why Trump Cheats at Golf
A couple of excerpts:
Jaron Lowenstein, who’s chatting with Sam, comments that in golf, much of the point is “playing the course” — testing your skills against the difficulties of the course as much as trying to outdo the other players.
Sam responds:
He’s right. Antisocial personality disorder — sociopathy — really is a form of moral insanity. That’s Trump.
I get it why for Sam Harris, with his heightened sense of morality, moral insanity would seem a big problem. But this is not only Trump’s problem and not his main problem. Moral insanity is not even a specific new-found form of insanity – it is simply the absence of morality. It begins with the general attitude of the class of the powerful that rules are for other people, not for themselves, and it ends with absolute selfishness, total lack of consideration for anyone or anything else.
But ever since he became the president (and then the president again), the main problem of Trump is his dementia, senility, the general deterioration of his mental health and all health. He deploys an army of collaborators to cover up his flaws and prop up his malignant narcissism. And his collaborators can only be mentally and morally broken like himself. It is a big problem for the whole country that these are the people who make up the government.
Erik:
The dementia is a big problem, but I’ll stress that malignant narcissism is a lifetime condition. Trump has been a horrible person his entire life. From earlier in the thread:
I’ve only watched the beginning of the Gartner video, but I recommend people watch his brief recitation of Trump’s words, starting here. Whenever the Orange Moron opens his mouth, our expectations are so low that we no longer feel the full impact of his stupidity and excessive self-regard. When you hear it in somebody else’s voice, it hits you full force.
The Toddler in Chief is at it again:
Trump is such a baby that he actually ended trade talks with Canada over this.
The ad was accurate. All it did was rearrange the order of clips from Reagan’s speech without changing the meaning in the slightest. Reagan was a staunch free trade advocate and would have been disgusted by Trump’s tariff policy.
Canada’s anti-tariff ad
Reagan’s speech (only five minutes long)
It’s so weird that Republicans who support Trump also revere Reagan, totally blind to the fact that Reagan would be horrified by what Trump is doing. Besides the tariff fiasco, try to imagine how Reagan would have reacted to Trump cozying up to dictators, invading American cities, tearing down the East Wing, accepting bribes, and screwing Ukraine and backing Russia, for starters.
Bill, Trump says that Reagan “LOVED TARIFFS”. Watch the ad and the Reagan speech and tell us what you think. Is Trump telling the truth?
Rex Huppke reflects on the White House ballroom fiasco:
I’m glad Trump is demolishing the White House to build a ballroom
Another beautiful example of Trump’s psychopathology. Destroying the East Wing after lying and saying that he wouldn’t, all to build a grotesque ballroom that isn’t needed and only serves as a monument to his personal vanity.
In case anyone had doubts, ABC reports:
keiths,
‘The Epstein Ballroom’ is trending.
Epstein is already lurking in the ballroom
https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/16×9-938086f12-3.jpg