OPINION:
Rep. Karen Bass of California was on-target when she called for a sanity check of Donald Trump (“Democratic congresswoman demands Donald Trump take psychiatric exam,” Web, Aug. 3). Our Constitution does not disqualify a political candidate for being insane, but the political parties in Cleveland and Philadelphia failed to ask mental health experts to certify candidates.
According to Dr. Lloyd I. Sederer of Columbia University: “More than 60 million people a year are diagnosed with some form of mental illness. It spares no sex, race, age, ethnicity, or income level.” The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports “10 million or 4.2 percent experience a serious mental illness in a given year that substantially interferes or limits one or more major life activities.”
So it is not necessarily unusual for a person to have a Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but neither is it a desirable characteristic for a presidential candidate.
Mr. Trump shows the following traits of the affliction: a grandiose sense of self-importance; he is conceited, boastful and pretentious, highly susceptible to flattery; he has a sense of entitlement and a preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success and power; he is arrogant, rude and abusive; he is highly reactive to critics and displays “narcissistic rage,”
Mr. Trump is not alone in showing these characteristics. Hillary Clinton is not exactly humble.
BOB BLAIR
Woodstock, Va.
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