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Donald Trump’s behavior in recent weeks has reportedly raised concerns in his camp that he could be suffering from PTSD, as he is said to be replaying the clip of the assassination attempt “over and over again.”
“He’s been watching that seven-second clip of how close he was to getting shot right in the head — over and over and over again,” a Republican close to the Trump campaign told Vanity Fairlast week.
They added: “He may actually legit have PTSD.”
“He’s been through a lot,” a campaign official added to the outlet, referring to how the shooting continues to weigh on Trump’s mind.
So does Trump really have undiagnosed PTSD from the near-death experience?
The Independent spoke to some experts to find out.
Rather than PTSD, one top expert said that Trump’s habit for rewatching the moment he was shot is more likely a sign of the former president’s “narcissism.”
“If he is going back and watching this – and this is my opinion – he’s not watching this in the vein of PTSD, he’s watching this in a vein of ‘look at this event that happened to me, I took a bullet for democracy’,” Dr Seth Norrholm, a PTSD specialist and director of the neuroscience center for anxiety, stress and trauma at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, told The Independent.
“For him, it’s more about revisiting his own battle in the context of military service.”
He added: “Put simply, narcissism overshadowed the post-traumatic response.”
Norrholm defines a narcissist as someone with “an elevated sense of importance, who doesn’t think the rules apply to them”. A narcissist might use “deceit and trickery to get ahead in life” and can often display “elements of sociopathy.”
Norrholm pointed to Trump’s behavior in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
When gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, the former president ducked behind the podium and Secret Service agents leaped on top of him.
After agents shot the gunman dead, they tried to whisk Trump from the stage. His face covered in blood, Trump stalled for a moment to thrust his fist into the air and shout “fight” at the crowd three times.
Norrholm explained that he would expect a victim of an assassination attempt to feel “an extreme level of fear” and that there would be a “reflexive or biological urge to preserve the self to survive.”
“What’s a little different in this situation is you’re talking about someone with an extreme level of narcissism,” he said. “What we saw from Trump was the reaction to fist bump to the crowd, to state ‘fight’ three times and that’s a little bizarre.
“It is possible that in those few seconds when he realized he had survived, maybe he had this rush of adrenaline… it comes into his mind that he’s going to do something about this...to make it a story, to get those photo opportunities.”
For Norrholm, there’s another reason the PTSD expert isn’t convinced the Republican presidential nominee has the disorder: because it is typically too soon for such a diagnosis.
Responses and reactions in the days and weeks immediately after a traumatic event are characterized as “an acute stress reaction”, not PTSD, according to Norrholm.
“It wouldn’t be surprising to hear that there may be psychological consequences ruminating about it, re-experiencing it,” he said.
“But we don’t really consider it to be PTSD or a disorder until those symptoms become consistent over a period of time.”
Laurie Kramer, a clinical psychologist and former director of the university honors program at Northeastern University in Boston, would not comment directly on the mental health of the former president for ethical reasons.
However, when speaking about behaviors in general she said that it is not uncommon for someone with PTSD to keep going over – or “perseverate” over – the event that has traumatized them.
As well as reportedly replaying the footage of the attack, in the weeks since the attack, Trump has also publicly spoken about the shooting multiple times in media interviews, rallies and campaign speeches.
“People may keep on thinking about the event, wanting to talk about it repeatedly, playing the events over in their mind,” Kramer explained.
“That’s probably a strategy to cope, to figure out why this happened and what meaning it has for them - they’re really grappling with how to respond.”
Kramer added: “We know that individuals who have experienced significant stress like this can have trouble concentrating, their memory might be affected.”
That said, she added: “Most people who have experienced a traumatic event don’t keep talking about it in order to get sympathy and support from others – rather they are actively trying to cope with the stress they’ve experienced.”
The Independent has contacted the Trump campaign for comment.
