Author dies after diagnosing himself with ‘post-Trump stress disorder’
It’s unlikely he thought it was fatal.
Acclaimed author Jeff Gillenkirk died of a heart attack this week, two days after publication of his final article, “The New PTSD: Post-Trump Stress Disorder.”
Gillenkirk, 67, suffered the heart attack Tuesday while teaching a class of third-graders in San Francisco, Alternet reported.
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Mr. Gillenkirk, an Alternet contributor and onetime speechwriter for former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, wrote in his final article of the severe anxiety he and others have experienced in the aftermath of Donald Trump being elected president — “a painful, sad irony,” said Alternet’s executive editor, Don Hazen.
“Anguishing yet again over election results in the middle of the night, I finally realized I’m experiencing something similar to PTSD,” reads Mr. Gillenkirk’s article, which was published Sunday. “Triggered by the election, to the most powerful office in the world, of a man who’s espoused wholesale exclusion of Muslim immigrants, deporting millions of undocumented immigrants, repealing Roe v. Wade, abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency and encouraging Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia to develop nuclear weapons, among other polarizing proposals.
