Has anyone heard the theory that Trump is showing signs of "sundowning"?

[Bleacher Creature]

I've seen it raised in a few FB feeds and googled it. It's basically the idea that certain people with early effects of dementia demonstrate their symptoms most often after dark. With Trump, that does seem to be the case, although I'm not sure if the theory also applies before sunrise, which is when quite a few of his craziest tweets come out.

Anyone have thoughts?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundowning

[Mr. Ected]

1. Do you mean Gordon Lightfootitis?

[spanone]

45. Bwaahahahaaa.

[Coventina]

48. Well played!!!

[luvMIdog]

52. that was the first thing that popped in my head

You know this excuse will be the first thing they use to pardon him of all wrong doing? And the bastard will skate off like he always has.

[greatauntoftriplets]

54. ...

I love that song!

[bettyellen]

2. I've only seen sundowning happen when the dementia was very apparent during the day-

They get worse at night- more anxiety mostly. Some need sedatives to make it through the night.

[marylandblue]

8. Trump is showing signs of dementia during the day too.

They may be keeping him off TV during his.worst moments, but some of the joint press conferences that they couldn't change have been bizarre.

[marylandblue]

3. Well, my mother with dementia

called an insurance company in the middle of the night because of an ad on TV. She did not have that insurance, but insisted she did. Sounds like somethimg Trump could do. Supposedly he calls friends in the middle of the night.

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

7. What???

drumpf has friends? I find that hard to swallow.

[marylandblue]

9. Accomplices might be a better word, like Flynn and Ruddy

[CentralMass]

17. And paid minions.

[Lotusflower70]

26. I know right

More like paid companions. Take that as you choose.

[Maeve]

4. My grandma went thru that

While we were living with her(and had a 2 yer-old). She was a totally different person by day or by night...one reasonable and loving, one paranoid and scary (the stories I could tell...)

45 seems to be a jerk full time.

[Siwsan]

5. I've been saying it, for a while, now

My brother and I just had a very long conversation about this very topic. We dealt with this condition, with my mom. It was very apparent, before the undeniable signs of Alzheimer's.

I wish someone would ask him him to draw the face of a clock. It is one of the easiest tests to determine the possibility of dementia. When they asked my mom to do this, she became very angry and frustrated. And probably scared, too, because it was beyond her ability to do this simple task.

[marylandblue]

10. Same with my mom

Very wierd, she could tell time on her watch, but couldn't draw a clock.

[hlthe2b]

6. Definite aspect of advanced Alzheimers and other dementias...

Family members are often advised to consider social and public events with the person affected earlier in the day for that reason. Confusion, lack of inhibitions and even aggressive verbal and/or physical behavior seem to increase in some patients late in the day. Obviously, NOT in all afflicted, but some.

If (IF IF IF IF) Trump is experiencing signs of dementia, that phenomenon could explain some issues.

[NCTraveler]

11. Hard to call it sundowning when it happens mid-morning. nt.

[Baconator]

12. I think it was the last Trumpcast podcast...

... and they had someone on who discussed it.

They compared his speech patterns to those from 25 years ago and there is a marked difference.

The two options were that either a) He does it on purpose as a means to reach his voting base or b) early onset of some form of mental degradation.

[loyalsister]

13. Are there any nondisabled people who understand that this need to pathologize 45 is ableist

"This horrible person must only be explained by arousing negative perceptions and stereotypes associated with some kind of illness" is an endless theme that is ultimately damaging to people who actually live the experience.

[haele]

14. Perhaps, perhaps not.

There's a difference between judging - pathologizing, in you words - and anticipating risks that can be linked to a person's behavior.
Humans are pattern seeking animals.
If it is observed that the difference between Drumpf now and Drumpf even ten years ago is significant and fits the profile of someone with dementia, it is not unexpected that people might point that out - and hell, people have probably been pointing that out.
I will say this though - should Drumpf be playing a long con to game the system by appearing to be a wealthy but uneducated hick for the rubes who make up the more vocal portion of his base, that's one thing. Should he truly be suffering from some form of dementia, and the GOP, his associates, and his family members are taking advantage of him and making money off infecting the country with his illness like Vampires, that's another situation altogether.
One thing for sure, he's not healthy.
The sooner he's assessed for competency, the better.

Haele

[loyalsister]

18. Says someone who wants to other him with his last name

His supports want objective, verifiable lists of undocumented immigrants who are criminals. It's just another form of bias confirming that exploits the marginalized status of real people.

[haele]

20. That's my pathology. FWIW, Drumpf was his original family name - his grandfather changed it.

My family name was something else before my GGGG-father changed the spelling, too.
And I've also got a lot of bad habits, especially that of both not being perfectly accepting or judgemental of everyone - including myself. I've gotten too old to judge.

(By the way, didn't you just call him 45? - sounds a lot like "othering" to me...)

Anyway -
Pointing out that his changes have been for the worse over the years is not "ableism". Pointing out that he could either be running a long Con or that he's too ill to function in the reasonably criminal manner he had been since his youth and is being taken advantage of is also not ableism. Lectures to an old Hippy about being properly progressive not withstanding.
(BTW, I've found over the years, neither Hippies and Radical Social Engineers are Progressive. It takes flexibility and real understanding - even when dealing with Assholes - to be Progressive.)

On edit - I don't mean to judge, and I will agree with you that the current administration is full of selfish fools and criminals.
But 1) We are still a country full of people who are nasty and brutish as well as being generous and full of joy - and we all have to figure out how to live with each other even if a quarter of us want to kill anyone that looks sideways at them, and
2) There is no Magic Wand that can fix the problem we are in, and it's going to be a long, hard slog to get to where we need to be.

Haele

[loyalsister]

23. It's not a pathology

Using the original spelling is an attempt to inspire the bigotry that whomever changed it wanted to avoid.

You're correct. There is no specific bigotry associated with it, but labeling him 45 is most definitely dehumanizing. The people pointing out these changes have not observed him up close, in real time. They are picking out instances and stereotypes and labeling them with specific diseases and disorders. These "observations" are distant and overstated efforts to confirm a bias by giving it a label. Trump should not be president for a long list of reasons. Slapping a name of an illness on them does not offer more validity, but it does tap into the bigotry that leads to exclusion of people who do have that Dx.

[haele]

25. Interesting discussion. Question - Is it exclusionary to assume risk on someone who shows symptoms?

For instance - both Schizophrenia and Dementia run in my family. Seriously - in my father's generation, 5 of the 7 born in that generation developed Schizophrenia enough so as to be considered dysfunctional, and two of my cousins are still in and out of institutions. While I and my brother have avoided it, it is still a concern we have for our children going forward.

As it is, in many situations, people have wondered both behind my back and aloud to me if I was autistic or a psychopath - mind you, the "good type" of psychopath that can disassociate to get things done, but I might be a psychopath, none the less. It hurt when I was younger, but now I don't let it bother me, because I'm still able to get things done. One of the upsides is that other borderline disruptive people tend to leave me alone and bother other people because they're not sure they can take me on.
No, I'm not a psychopath (had two different psychs affirm this!), but I do have a tendency to emotionally disassociate during stressful situations - comes from going through several hellish emergency situations that almost killed me and loved ones at a very young age.

So, back to the discussion - should I not be concerned about the cousin I still have some interaction with, and be aware and say something when it seems she may be off her meds or might require a bit more assessment than her current therapist might be giving her? Should I not be able to make a judgment and try and get professional help aware of her actions when she decided to fire her therapist and self-medicate? Or should I just let her go on in her downward spiral and let her crash all over her community. Twelve years ago, her actions while un-medicated ended up seriously injuring both herself and two innocent bystanders...

Likewise, should I ask my spouse not to keep an eye out for my development of symptoms of Dementia?
Will he be a bigot, or demeaning to me when he suggests I need to seek help, because I'm showing signs I may either be clinically depressed (I do suffer from that occasionally) or that I am at the age I may start showing dementia?

My position in this discussion is that I have made the personal determination is that it's not exclusionary to wonder if there's something wrong - when we're still acting based on the person's actual actions.
Fearing to look bad hurting a tyrant's feelings by not poking at him or her is just as useless as being fearful and kowtowing to the tyrant. Belittling a bully - especially a public figure that has "authority" is one of the ways of removing power from him or her - even if it's just a bit. It's a time-honored job; the Court Jester. Unfortunately, in the current situation, there are very few people who are going to point out that the Emperor has no clothes.

Yes, it's somewhat "bigoted" and demeaning to suggest a DX of dementia to someone who may just be a sociopath - or just be having a bad day. And I certainly wouldn't do it to my neighbor, even though I might wonder about him or her, if there seems to be issues on a regular basis.

But a public figure now - if I were in Drumpf's position, I would expect getting all sorts of shit thrown at me, be it true or not, especially if I acted like him. That's the price of the job - and it's going to be worse for the ones who act like a bully, play favorites instead of do their jobs, and throw tantrums in public.

Haele

[loyalsister]

35. "symptoms" has a flexible meaning outside of a formal Dx

People have decided they have a right to label behavior as clinically pathological outside of such a setting or formal evaluation because this man is president. It doesn't matter if they weren't there. Doesn't matter that they have no access to actual documentation.
Would we accept that from people who wanted to challenge our capability or credibility? Should an airline pilot be redflagged as a potential alcoholic because they got drunk at a Xmas party? Drinking excessively is a symptom of alcoholism and being a pilot is a dangerous job. But we know that it is not enough to accept suppositions as fact.

[haele]

42. Well, now we go into another issue. Observational Risk Assessment.

Workplaces have policies - written and unwritten rules - in which if you exhibit certain behaviors, you can legally be considered a risk whether or not there's a DX. Everywhere. Those behaviors need to be documented, but there needs to be 1) a pattern of behavior, and 2) evidence available that can constitute that the person exhibiting those behaviors has a measurable potential damage the organization.
So, in your example, If your pilot gets drunk at one Xmas party, that's perhaps a concern if s/he's driving home, but it's not "actionable". S/he may be exposed to some joking or co-workers might express concern afterwards, but if that's the only time it happened, it's just a matter of people being people. Especially if it's held against that pilot for that one time; then the pilot has grounds for a hostile workplace suit.

However - if that pilot has a habit of getting legally drunk on a regular basis, even if it's not within the scheduled 12 hour pre-flight window that the FAA rules dictate, then the company has the right to tell him or her that their behavior is not appropriate, and they need to go into some form of rehab, because they're concerned about the risk that the pilot might come in if called up for an emergency flight and be shitfaced.

There's no official DX of alcoholism present. But there is the symptom similar to alcoholism that there's some form of underlying risk that the pilot is exhibiting. So the pilot can expect to be let go without much recourse, whether or not th business says it's because the pilot an alcoholic, or simply a public danger due to use of alcohol to - oh, self medicate depression, or just because s/he's irresponsible jerk.
That the pilot suffers from alcoholism is a supposition the business can take, not because it's a label that's used willy-nilly because the pilot got drunk at the company party - once - or acted like a drunk jerk - once.
It's because there's a consistency of action that makes the pilot's risk profile as being an alcoholic an actionable supposition for the business. The law ultimately won't care if s/he's diagnosed as an alcoholic or not. There's still a behavior that shows the risk that the pilot might end up in the cockpit drunk.

It may seem specious to some - especially to those who are trying to function in society with the burden of an actual mental/emotional or physical illness, but the supposition that the current resident of the Oval Office is not mentally competent enough to hold that office is evident enough by his consistent actions to be made.
Whether he's a just a criminal being a criminal, or whether he is suffering from dementia.

It's not a slam or exclusionary to those who are trying to be functional. He is blatantly symptomatic in his actions in the public, whether or not he's actually been diagnosed, and his mental situation is a critical risk to the country at large.


Haele

[loyalsister]

43. Sometiumes a jerk is just a jerk

and sometimes a bigot is just a bigot.

[haele]

46. I thank you...

From the bottom of my mostly functional, sometimes clinically depressed (DXed fourteen years ago), yet hard working, disabled heart.

I've been called a jerk, but I've never been called a bigot before. There's one more on the bucket list.

Peace out.

Haele

[marylandblue]

44. Yes people do have a right to say what they want

And no I would not conclude that a pilot who got drunk once at a party is an alcoholic. On the other hand, if I saw a pilot who appeared to be drunk walk on a plane, I would certainly tell someone to investigate and might refuse to fly if they didn't.

We make suppositions all the time, and live our lives accordingly. If you saw some "acting crazy" and carrying a gun, would you wait for a formal risk assessment by a security professional, or just suppose you were in danger, alert people and protect yourself?

And you are correct people have assumed a right to diagnose him on the fly. Not just because he is president, but because he can affect my life and yours, just loke a potential shooter near you could. We don't need to provide a formal diagnosis precisely BECAUSE we are not qualified professionals and nobody thinks we are. If we were psychiatric professionals there would be (and is) a legitimate ethical debate on this, but in personal conversation there are no such ethical constraints. It's clearly in the realm of speculation, opinion and polotical discourse.

[RandomAccess]

56. You're right

>> People have decided they have a right to label behavior as clinically pathological outside of such a setting or formal evaluation because this man is president. It doesn't matter if they weren't there. Doesn't matter that they have no access to actual documentation. <<

You're right -- except about the president part.

MY claim to that right goes well beyond that. I claim the right for myself to make an educated guess about ANYONE I encounter's psychological health, tho I certainly never consider it anything close to an actual "diagnosis." I claim this right because I'm human and earnestly and sometimes frenetically seek to understand my life and my environment. I make these assumptions about anyone I know or see in the wider world based on their behavior and what I know of pathological behavior or illness.

Newt Gingrich, for example, taught me a LOT about narcissism and sociopathy. Has he ever been diagnosed with those? I doubt it. Doesn't matter any more than MY "diagnosis" matters. It helps ME understand him, and others like him (and aren't there a lot of 'em?), and have some idea of how to proceed or handle him and others like him. If I can spot excess narcissism in any of the people I have to interact with, I'm way better off if I understand the dynamics than if I don't.

I see absolutely no value in closing off that line of inquiry in my mind, or refusing to discuss it in places like this. If I felt on solid ground and had some cites, I'd probably also take my observations to Letters to the Editor.

>> Would we accept that from people who wanted to challenge our capability or credibility? <<

I'm not overly concerned about that. Why do you think I should be?


>> Should an airline pilot be redflagged as a potential alcoholic because they got drunk at a Xmas party? <<

No, he should be redflagged as a guy who might get drunk at your next Xmas party, or other events where alcohol is served. I don't see people going off the deep end with their armchair diagnoses, and even fewer actual life-altering decisions getting made based on them.

[marylandblue]

32. I still don't get your point.

Is labelling him a horrible person any less demeaning or stereotyping? Isn't that alittle like calling him a "bad hombre?" Do we exclude horrible people from public life only if they DON'T have a diagnosis and let them in if they do.

And this isn't just some DUers pathologizing him. People who do know him personally think he is a narcissist or a sociopath. And one college professor who doesn't actually know him uses videos of Trump to show examples of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He said if it weren't for Trump, he would haave had to hire actors to do the same thing.

Of course, we don't know for sure if he has any mental disorder. But for those of us who seen these things up close and personal, he sure does look familiar.

[marylandblue]

16. I've got mental health issues myself and they run in my family

So I don't see it as ableist at all. It's just a reality. I would not be qualified to be President neither should someone with my condition own a gun (even though I am certain that I personally would never harm someone). Had my father owned a gun, he likely would have shot my mother or himself.

[loyalsister]

19. As noted

It's no different from 45s initiative to criminalize millions of people by associating them with his list of undocumented criminals because. An objective measure will convince them that I'm right that they are all bad people- or that trump is a bad person who should not be president.
It is something people are imposing and clinging to with no direct evidence.

[marylandblue]

21. It is different

Because we are basing our comments on his actual behavior. We are not concluding that all white men over 70 have dementia or are bad people. It actually makes me feel more compassion for Trump to think he has an illness rather than calling him "bad" or "evil."

Also it helps me understand his behavior better.

It's easier to understand his bizarre and dangerous behavior through the lens of mental illness, than to assume he has simply perfected the art of acting crazy in a wild 11th dimensional chess match by an evil genius whose IQ is really as high as he thinks it is.

[LanternWaste]

49. I think there is both a relevant and critical difference

"It's no different from 45s initiative to criminalize millions..."

I think there is both a relevant and critical difference.

Trump made an overly broad observation about an entire demographic, and concluded from that, specific traits. He then applied those traits to all individuals within that demographic ("they're rapists and criminals...&quot . That is, in and of itself, an Inductive Fallacy (Fallacy of the Faulty Generalization and Fallacy of Distribution).

On the other hand, observing one specific object (e.g., Trump) under multiple conditions and drawing conclusions from that is a valid application of Deductive Reasoning, regardless of whether the conclusion is True or False in our case, as it avoids the fallacies of the Illicit Major, Conclusions from a negative Premise and the Undistributed Middle.

[geek tragedy]

22. Mentally he's regressed from 10-20 years ago.

His sentence structure etc was much more intelligent

[unblock]

30. not sure i'd use the word "intelligent"

more fluent, sure.
better vocabulary, sure.
less idiotic, sure.

more intelligent? eh....

[loyalsister]

36. How many hours have you spent with him?

And how many formal assessments have you made to document a decline? None. You are basing it on distant observations.

[geek tragedy]

38. generally verbal communication is the best way to assess a person's intelligence

absent formal batteries of diagnostic tests.

Trump 20-30 years ago was a sleazeball, but he wasn't a toddler.

[RKP5637]

55. His vocalization now is totally different, doesn't even sound/act like the same person. And in fact

he acts like he's in a daze so much of the time.

[Else You Are Mad]

28. I disagree.

That is like saying just pointing out that someone is black or Asian is a racist. IMO pointing out obvious signs is not ableist. Trump is not horrible because of the signs of dementia, he is just a horrible person with signs of dementia. Just like a person that points out that some one is black or Asian is not racist until they say the person that is black or Asian is awful because they are that race.

[loyalsister]

37. This is a constant effort to impose a diagnosis on him

It is exactly the same MO as imposing a Dx on a mass murderer.

[Else You Are Mad]

39. But pointing out symptoms is not a diagnosis.

It is merely an observation. Sundowning is a symptom not a disorder. Merely saying that it appears he is sundowning is not saying that everyone with such symptoms are as bad as Trump or that his symptoms are the reason he is a horrible person.

[loyalsister]

41. Is it a coincidence

Is it a coincidence that the "symptoms" people are desperately claiming to objectively observe happen to match those of devestating diagnoses?

[Else You Are Mad]

47. No.

That just means he shares symptoms that other people with dementia have. What is wrong with that? No one that points such out is equating people with dementia to how Trump is an awful person.

[marylandblue]

50. "Desparately claiming to objectively observe?"

Symptoms are, by definition, objectively observable. We all see.how he speaks and acts. A diagnosis is an inference drawn from observations. Your questioning our inferences, not our observations. I think we ca all agree on what we see. We are just arguing about it means.

[RandomAccess]

57. This is a little bit backwards.

Or even a lot.

You seem to be implying that people are searching for some reason to claim he's got dementia. Is that your position?

What I see is people trying to understand what's wrong with this nutjob (there! do you prefer this term over amateur "diagnoses" not based on clinical data??) -- and what they're coming up with, many of which are based on some of their own life experiences with loved ones, happens to track in some specific ways with dementia.

And oh, the horrors: they're DARING TO SAY SO!

But no. No coincidence at all. There aren't amateur diagnoses running around looking for evidence to support them -- just the reverse.

[politicaljunkie41910]

15. The theory is that some elderly people may have episodes of confusion in the evening as they age.

Last edited Thu Jun 15, 2017, 07:15 PM - Edit history (1)

It doesn't happen all the time but may happen, so they tell the elderly and family members to turn on lights in the house at dusk or put lighting on a timer to prevent it. My dad who had dementia had an episode of it, several years prior to the onset of other demential related behaviors. He lived alone, and one day while returning from an outing, he got lost while driving. A woman noticed him driving very slow in the slow lane on the freeway. As she passed his vehicle she noticed he was a elderly man and she signaled for him to pull over. He stopped and when she approached him and asked him was he lost, he gave her his driver's license and car registration thinking she was a cop. She asked him where he was going and if he needed some help and he said No, he was headed home from work (when he had been retired almost two decades). When she asked where home was, he said Ontario CA, which was correct, but he was headed south of Riverside at the time and was far from home traveling in the wrong direction. Using the information on his driver's license, she told him if he followed her vehicle she would make sure he made it home. He did and she took him home and let his next door neighbor know what had happened and the neighbor notified my sister, who's a doctor. They installed timers on lamps in his house so the house would not be totally dark at dusk and he continued to live alone for several more years without incident which we are aware of. (several family members all medical professionals live nearby). Several years later he went on to exhibit other dementia related behavioral characteristics and went to live with my sister the doctor. He passed away in his sleep in 2016, at age 86.

[moonscape]

31. What a lovely woman to reach out and help in that way. Heartwarming.

Your mom died the way so many of us hope for when it's our time. I cared for my mom who had dementia. She had a stroke and died 10 days later, so did not have to endure the very end of alzheimer's for which I'm grateful. But going in her sleep would have been an even greater blessing.

Sorry for your loss.

[marybourg]

34. A very interesting and heartwarming

Story on many levels and a good suggestion for those of us approaching that stage of life.

[UTUSN]

24. Partially, perhaps. But what explains his lifetime socipathic amorality, mobsterism, & brute force?

[marylandblue]

51. I believe it is Narcissistic Personality Disorder

That's a lifelong illness.

[JenniferJuniper]

27. My mother is a sundowner

She's fine during most of the day, but when she first wakes up or if she wakes up in the middle of the night she is often very confused. She says it can take a few minutes for her to figure out where she is, even when she's in her own bed in a room she has slept in for 4 years.

When she's in a hotel or hospital it's really bad as she doesn't come out of it for a long time.

She's just a few years older than notmyPresident.

[airmid]

29. My Mother suffered from this the last few months of her life. It seems to be common in

in the elderly. As my Mom's cancer progressed and she was admitted to hospice, it became truly awful.

[Ilsa]

33. It will take something shocking, like a TV interview

in the evening, where he messes up even more than usual. Maybe him having a hallucination or total brain fart (not recognizing Melania) will clue people in.

[scardycat]

40. Oh I dont think Trump has dementia..

but he definately has a serious mental problem..not sure what it is though...however, I think John Mccain shows symptoms of dementia.

[luvMIdog]

53. I don't either. He has tempter tantrums and no control. He a narcissistic spoiled rotten brat.