Therapist Receives Death Threats After Declaring ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ Is Real ‘Pathology’ Impacting Most of His Patients
by Frank Bergman
A New York City psychotherapist says he has received dozens of hostile messages, including explicit death threats, after publicly describing the growing number of patients in his practice who exhibit what he calls symptoms of “Trump derangement syndrome” (TDS).
Jonathan Alpert, a Manhattan-based licensed therapist and author of the forthcoming book “Therapy Nation,” revealed that the backlash began immediately after he appeared on Fox News last week to discuss a Wall Street Journal op-ed he wrote on Nov. 12.
In the piece, he described “patients across the political spectrum” who raise President Donald Trump in therapy sessions “not to discuss policy but to process obsession, rage, and dread.”
Alpert shared several messages he says he received through text and email over the past week.
Many were profane; some included threats.
One message told him to “eat s— and die.”
Another called him a “pedophile protector.”
A third read: “You’re a lowlife… pedophile who decent people hope is slaughtered.”
“It’s been intense,” Alpert said.
“I expected disagreement, but I didn’t expect the level of hostility, especially from people in the mental health field.”
He said the reactions highlight a contradiction he’s observed:
“Many of the people who speak the most about empathy, tolerance, and inclusion reacted with the least of it.
“That reversal tells us something about how emotionally charged politics has become.”
A Growing Pattern in Therapy Rooms
Alpert drew national attention after appearing on Fox’s “The Faulkner Focus” on Nov. 14, where he argued that “Trump derangement syndrome” is not simply a political insult but a real emotional pattern he’s seeing more frequently.
“This is a profound pathology, and I would even go so far as to call it the defining pathology of our time,” he said on-air.