Psychologists warn Donald Trump may be Mentally Sick

Health experts are warning that Donald Trump is displaying "classic signs" of being mentally ill - including 'malignant narcissism'. When battling him for US Presidency, Hillary Clinton famously claimed Trump was "temperamentally unfit" for the job.

At the time people thought she was either joking or attempting to land a cheap political blow. After this last 10 days though, people are starting to ask if she was right.

Even psychologists have now begun questioning Trump state of mind - with mental health experts speaking out.

A group called Citizen Therapists Against Trumpism has even been created - which has thousands of members and has published a manifesto warning of Trump’s alleged psychosis.

They claim the warning signs are:

• Scapegoating and banishing groups of people who are seen as threats, including immigrants and religious minorities
• Degrading, ridiculing, and demeaning rivals and critics
• Fostering a cult of the Strong Man who appeals to fear and anger
• Promises to solve our problems if we just trust in him
• Reinvents history and has little concern for truth (and) sees no need for rational persuasion.

Moreover, the Citizen Therapists argue that Trump’s egotistical ways are creating “the illusion that real Americans can only become winners if others become losers.” It doesn't stop there though.

Practising pyschotherapist John D Gartner told US News - in an article called Temperament Tantrum - that Trump “is dangerously mentally ill and temperamentally incapable of being president.”

Indeed, he firmly believes Trump shows all the signs of “malignant narcissism" - which is clinically defined as a combination of narcissism, anti-social personality disorder, aggression and sadism.

Meanwhile in an article in the NY Daily News , clinical psychologist Dr Julie Futrell went a step further this week, saying: "Narcissism impairs his ability to see reality so you can't use logic to persuade someone like that,.

“Three million women marching? Doesn't move him. Advisers point out that a policy choice didn't work? He won't care.”

One anonymous psychologist told the NY Daily News: “With Trump, he's a disturbed person who protects himself by building up his ego and tearing down others." The concerns have been there for sometime.

According to the NY Daily News , one woman who used to work for Trump in the Eighties, Barbara Res, told how one day in 1982 someone bought in a newspaper article on narcissim. She says: “Being the team who was charged with building Trump Tower, we all knew Donald Trump very well, especially myself.

"To a person, we all agreed that the characteristics outlined in the article fit Donald to a 'T'. "Now, 35 years later, professionals are saying what we knew back then. Only now he is so much worse.”

Last month three leading psychiatry professors wrote to Barack Obama expressing their grave concerns over Trump's mental stability.

The professors - hailing from Harvard Medical School and the University of California - urged the incumbent leader or order a "full and medical and neuropsychiatric evaluation" of the President Elect.

They wrote: “His widely reported symptoms of mental instability - including grandiosity, impulsivity, hypersensitivity to slights or criticism, and an apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality - lead us to question his fitness for the immense responsibilities of the office."

But perhaps the best authority might be the American Psychiatry Association - which has over the years developed a nine-point checklist for narcissism.

If someone displays just FIVE of these traits they are defined as having Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognised as superior without commensurate achievements)
2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. 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)
4. Requires excessive admiration
5. Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favourable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
6. Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognise or identify with the feelings and needs of others
8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes.