I read Dr. Moffic’s column today about the challenge in finding a rational solution to the objections many psychiatrists have to diagnosing President Donald Trump with a psychiatric disorder, despite the Goldwater Rule against doing that in any public forum.
Dr. Moffic points out that the high emotions aroused on both sides of the political aisle by the president has resulted in proposed legislation by Minnesota republican lawmakers to create a novel psychiatric diagnosis, Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), which may justify revising the Goldwater Rule, allowing psychiatrists to go public with diagnoses of President Trump.
I suspect that the TDS law was provoked by the conflict between democrats and republicans about the president. In fact, one of the Minnesota lawmakers has basically admitted that the bill was a prank by calling it “…tongue in cheek…” On the other hand, if this is just frustration between politicians, then I would expect that the whole thing might have been dropped a couple of weeks ago.
Yet, the bill still stands, albeit without any movement forward to committee. One of the authors, Senator Glenn Gruenhagen, has posted a comment on Facebook on March 17, 2025 (the day the bill was introduced), indicating that he knows democrats “…will never allow this bill to pass anyway, so take a breath and calm down.”
Can we do that, please? A good start might be to withdraw the bill.
I also saw a news story posted by The Guardian on March 26, 2025, quoting a New York City Child Psychiatrist, Leon Hoffman, MD, suggesting that the Goldwater Rule is too often broken, and, in response to the TDS gambit, that it might be preferable “…to develop a comparable national rule prohibiting political personnel, both elected and appointed, from creating psychiatric diagnoses as a tool against their political opponents.” Would anyone like to second that emotion?
You can’t just legislate restraint, respect and kindness in public or private discourse. Policies and laws can lay the groundwork for the eventual development of tolerance and maybe even acceptance of others. The Goldwater Rule is too often broken. The Golden Rule is too often broken as well.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 
I would like to second that motion and have pointed that out many times on my blog. A political tactic is not a psychiatric diagnosis. And the “calm down” approach minimizes the intentional provocation by Trump and his minions that is really a direct connection back to the days of Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy through his (and Donald Trump’s) lawyer Roy Cohen. The “tongue in cheek” comment is also a red flag. A familiar refrain is that Trump is really “joking” he is not serious about burning everything down – right up to the point that he lights the match. Allowing TDS to stand legitimizes all of this adolescent rhetoric and puts us at the level of sending Russian dissidents to the Gulag for a fictitious psychiatric diagnosis.
LikeLiked by 1 person