Another new category for the DSM?

BocaNews.com:
"Boca Raton trauma specialist Douglas Schooler said he has treated 15 clients and friends with “intense hypnotherapy” since the Democratic nominee conceded last Wednesday.
“I had one friend tell me he’s never been so depressed and angry in his life,” Schooler said. “I observed patients threatening to leave the country or staring listlessly into space. They were emotionally paralyzed, shocked and devastated.”
Schooler’s disclosure comes after the weekend discovery of a Kerry volunteer’s corpse at Ground Zero in New York City. Georgia resident Andrew Veal, 25, reportedly killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head due to Kerry’s loss and a girlfriend problem.
Some mental health professionals in South Florida said Monday they have already developed a new category for the Kerry-related stress reactions. Because Palm Beach County voted heavily for Kerry, the therapists said, many residents hurt themselves by so anxiously expecting the Massachusetts senator to win – especially those who maintained unrealistic recount hopes after their candidate’s concession.
“We’re calling it ‘post-election selection trauma’ and we’re working to develop a counseling program for it,” said Rob Gordon, the Boca-based executive director of the American Health Association. “It’s like post-traumatic stress syndrome, but it’s a short-term shock rather than a childhood trauma.”
Gordon, the first American Red Cross psychotherapist sent to Ground Zero after the 9/11 terror attacks, said therapists’ main concern is to prevent the recurrence of Kerry-related suicides like the one in New York City."

Follow the link for the full story. As far as I'm concerned, these people already had a screw loose if they thought there was no chance that Kerry might actually lose. In fact, it reminds me of the speech by Libby Holden (brilliantly played by Kathy Bates), the former mental patient and long-time political associate of Governor and Mrs. Stanton (John Travolta and Emma Thompson), in the movie Primary Colors where she recalls what she thought when she learned that Sen. Tom Eagleton, Sen. George McGovern's first running mate, had experienced a breakdown years earlier and received electro-convulsive therapy and had to resign from the race. She blamed it on President Richard Nixon, it had to be a Republican plot, she actually thought the Democrats could win in 1972, she couldn't believe that McGovern was so incompetent he could lose to such an awful man as Nixon.