An Arizona lawmaker introduced a bill this week directing state health authorities to study the so-called “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS), an invented medical condition that the president and his allies have accused of afflicting his strongest critics.
Senate Bill 1070, introduced Monday by State Sen. Janae Shamp, gives the Arizona Department of Health Services a year to study the “origins, manifestations and long-term effects on individuals, communities and the public discourse” of the so-called condition, which is not recognized by mainstream medical organizations.
Beyond just directing a study, the bill would enshrine a series of legislative findings, including the claim that the “irrational animus” of TDS caused the two assassination attempts against Trump last year, while other findings praise the president’s “contributions to America’s prosperity,” such as “eliminating harmful mandates and affirming biological truth in federal policy to protect family values.”
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is unlikely to sign the bill from Shamp, a registered nurse and ardent Trump supporter.
Will Humble, former director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, told Arizona’s Family the proposal is “silly.”
“You’re ordering a state agency to do a bunch of work that has no objective, no meaningful outcome,” he said. “And, by the way, it’s outside their mission — they’re not social scientists.”
The Independent has contacted Shamp for comment.
The Arizona effort follows Republican attempts in Minnesota and at the federal level to codify or study the invented syndrome.
The term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” was coined during Trump’s first term, and since then, the president and his supporters have often used the term to dismiss the strongest critics of the president as mentally ill.
Most recently, the president claimed TDS was responsible for the slaying of director Rob Reiner and his wife, provoking widespread outrage. Reiner, a lifelong progressive, was a frequent public critic of the president.
The president used a similar tactic last year, claiming that his former chief of staff John Kelly was suffering from TDS after Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, compared Trump to Adolf Hitler.
Individual psychological providers have claimed some of their patients report to be suffering from TDS.
“Is ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ real? No serious mental-health professional would render such a partisan and derogatory diagnosis,” Jonathan Alpert wrote in a November op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. “Yet I’ve seen it in my own psychotherapy practice.”
