Psychobabble of the Month: Think of Jealousy as a Mental Disorder

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In an article published in top psychiatry journal JAMA Psychiatry, researchers David Mataix-Cols and Johan Åhlén argue that doctors should be on the lookout for a new diagnosis: obsessional jealousy. In response, we consulted our book of Shakespeare, and started counting the number of lead characters who suffered from this “defect.”

Othello seems to be the leading example of this, and little did we know there was already a diagnostic term for it in the research literature: the “Othello syndrome.”

Prolonged grief was suggested as a possible disorder in DSM-5 before making its big official debut in ICD-11 and DSM-5 TR. Jealousy is following the same playbook: DSM-5 already floated obsessional jealousy as a possible “other” OCD-related disorder, so Mataix-Cols and Åhlén’s article is the next step in moving it into the official diagnosis territory.

“The analogy with prolonged grief disorder is instructive,” Mataix-Cols and Åhlén write, about their new jealousy diagnosis. “Grief is universal, but in a minority of people it becomes persistent, debilitating, and qualitatively distinct, warranting recognition as a disorder to facilitate appropriate treatment.” Jealousy is the same, they suggest: “in some people, jealousy becomes excessive, intrusive, persistent, and uncontrollable, undermining rather than protecting intimacy.”

Perhaps the analogy with grief is instructive for another reason, though: people diagnosed with “prolonged grief disorder” actually don’t think they have a disorder, nor do they think the diagnosis is helpful. In a study of those who experienced a recent significant loss, 98% said that their grief was the appropriate, healthy reaction. Of those who met criteria for the “prolonged grief disorder” diagnosis, only 13.4% said they thought the diagnosis could be helpful.

Would jealous people find being called mentally ill helpful? If you are suspicious of your partner’s behavior, would it help your relationship to be diagnosed as “obsessively jealous”? Who gets to decide what is “too jealous”? What if your partner is actually being dishonest? Mataix-Cols and Åhlén don’t address these issues. Rather—and here is the big leap—suggesting that labeling jealousy as mental illness will help relationships!

A man with a jealous girlfriend will now able to obtain “understanding, assistance,” and even unspecified “protection” once he convinces her that she has a psychiatric illness because she’s suspicious of his behavior. While some might be tempted to call this gaslighting; this article presents the diagnosis as a helpful way forward.

“For partners and significant others, recognition could also be helpful,” Mataix-Cols and Åhlén write, “as it may offer an explanation for distressing experiences in the relationship and support their own need for understanding, assistance, and, for some, even protection.”

A diagnosis is a prelude to treatment, and the authors of the study do confess that “the notion of a drug for jealousy is implausible.” The point of such a diagnosis would be to help the jealous person get a different, unspecified “treatment, which of course doesn’t yet exist, because jealousy is not yet a diagnosis.

And so the DSM world view marches on. One moment prolonged grief is a disorder; the next day being jealous is up for consideration as a disorder! We are tempted now to imagine Othello, raging about his fears that his wife Desdemona has been unfaithful to him, being told that it’s likely all in his head. However, we have a difficult time imagining that such “treatment” would get him to calm down, and are grateful to Shakespeare for that thought, that he would persist in his rage.

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Mataix-Cols, D. & Åhlén, J. (2026). Does Obsessional Jealousy Belong in Psychiatry? JAMA Psychiatry. Published online February 11, 2026. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2025.4735 (Link)

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Editors’ note: Psychobabble is a new monthly feature of our science coverage. Readers may submit suggestions for journal articles to be featured as Psychobabble of the Month to [email protected].

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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18 COMMENTS

  2. I have been trained to observe a large variety of “negative emotions.” When in a negative emotional state, a being is not rational. Psychiatry could observe this and say: “Let’s assign a disorder to every negative emotion.” As mentioned in the article however, they don’t have a clue what to do about any of them.
    Any valid therapy would bring a being up out of the negative emotion band – preferably permanently – so they could view their situation in a more rational way. But that doesn’t mean that the emotion is “inappropriate” or should be frowned on. The biggest problem is when it motivates criminal behavior.
    Psychiatrists and psychologists – except for a very few – know nothing useful about any of this and their pontifications should be strictly ignored. If we all did this the world would be much better off.

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    • I’m curious what you mean by “negative emotion.” Why doesn’t this apply to “positive emotions” as well? Are people also “irrational” (whatever that means) in positive emotional states? Why or why not? Or maybe people are only “rational” when they are in a completely “neutral” mental state– neither positive nor negative?

      Is is it really preferable that one is “brought up” out of the “negative emotion band” permanently? I certainly don’t think so.

      And is the “biggest problem” truly when it motivates “criminal” behavior? Is lawful behavior always the same as moral behavior? (I don’t think so.) And are negative emotions always necessarily what motivates such behavior?

      I know that’s a lot of questions, but your comment really got me thinking & raised some very interesting points.

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      • Jasmine, I’m going to summarize for you. But you should really study the materials I’ve studied. This is a theory I’ve been trained in. I don’t expect anyone unfamiliar with it to understand it or agree with it, though I hope they might.
        Emotion, definition 3 in my search engine: “A moving of the mind or soul; excitement of the feelings, whether pleasing or painful; disturbance or agitation of mind caused by a specific exciting cause and manifested by some sensible effect on the body.”
        It is based on the root word for motion or movement. So in this theory, it means what happens as the mind causes the body to do things. What the body is doing reflects the emotional state of the being.
        You can SEE cheerfulness, boredom, antagonism, anger, hatred, fear, grief, and hopelessness (to name a few of the more recognizable).
        Rational of course requires an evaluation. It means ability or reason, or sanity. We evaluate that reasoning that results in survival is rational, and “reasoning” that results in death or destruction is irrational.
        The division between “positive” and “negative” is a result of observation. Above antagonism (play fighting), a person is capable of reasoning. Below that level, they are not. They are being “reactive” or letting mental mechanisms control them.
        That doesn’t mean it makes no sense to be afraid in a dangerous situation (for instance). But that fear will paralyze you or just make you scream or run. If you could remain relatively calm in a dangerous situation, you would have a better chance of seeing it for what it is and taking the steps that are most appropriate for the survival of yourself and others.
        This is a theory based on observation. There is no attempt to connect any of this to body chemistry or brain chemistry. It’s based on behaviors and the results of behaviors, and the obvious observation that people tend to survive when then are more rational and to succumb when they are less rational.
        Fear and anger often lead to deception and lethal violence. Hopelessness can lead to terrorism or suicide. Boredom, conservatism, or cheerfulness don’t. There are good reasons to keep people rational, even in the face of extremely disturbing circumstances. But it’s not something that can be forced on anyone. Authoritarian “therapy” is in itself irrational.

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    • “Let’s assign a disorder to every negative emotion.” Isn’t that what the scientifically “invalid” psych industries have been doing for decades?

      “Psychiatrists and psychologists – except for a very few – know nothing useful about any of this and their pontifications should be strictly ignored. If we all did this the world would be much better off.” I agree.

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    • I agree, Larry. The word would be much better off if we all ignored psychiatry and psychology’s pontifications, most of whom have zero self-awareness yet are full of themselves simply because they have letters after their name. Shallow as can be.

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  3. Many years ago I was a therapist working with a couple that sought therapy because the wife was convinced her husband was having an affair. He characterized her concerns as obsessive, intrusive, unfair, upsetting and as affecting the marriage, the children’s well being etc. He attributed some of it to the fact that she was from a South American country and was therefore emotionally different from those raised in US. After almost a year it came to light that he not only had had an ongoing affair of several years duration, there was a 3 year old child from their relationship. I thought this was the very essence of gaslighting. Not just him but me! Not a pretty story. I’m glad the DSM of the time didn’t have me spending time trying to diagnose the wife!

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    • Experience of this type is very valuable.
      That was gaslighting, and goodness knows how common it is.
      The gaslighters will continue to run around assigning “disorders” to normal people until such time as we call them out as the mentally ill people they are and begin to ignore their pronouncements.

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  4. True pathological jealousy is part of the paranoid state and is one of the most dangerous of all mental states. The term ‘Othello syndrome’ has been used long before I started psychiatry in 1974. It is real and must be taken seriously, not least because these people are usually very good at concealing the full extent of their disturbance. It is difficult to manage because it blurs with “normal” jealousy as a personality factor. My limited experience is that it is equally common in women as men and just as dangerous. I rarely told people they had to separate from partners but did in two cases on the basis somebody was going to be hurt. Both cases they declined for one reason or another; both cases had a fatal outcome, one the victim lashed out and perpetrator died and other the victim died.
    Do not under any circumstances dismiss the concept of pathological jealousy as “just more shrinks trying to create a disease where there isn’t one.”

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    • Occasionally I have been on the receiving end of another’s all-consuming jealousy. Maybe it was envy. But their inability to be happy for me revealed their true colors: immature, unintegrated individuals intent on blaming me for life’s basic unfairness.

      Pathology? No. Red flag? YES.

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    • But we KNOW, Niall, that no one is going to appreciate the difference between pathological “jealousy” (or fear of being discovered) and justified doubts about the honesty of an emotional partner. And we’ll have all sorts of people who suspect their spouse of cheating (or whatever) on dangerous drugs instead of learning the truth.
      In the gaslighting example given above, it was the cheater who was pathological, not the jealous person.
      Broadly, this sort of behavior is already covered under personality “disorders” like narcissism or psychopathy. It’s difficult to address because a lot of psychiatrists suffer from these. And because they don’t have a clue what to do about them.
      We all know that people can go insane and kill each other. The problem is dumping that fact in the lap of Psychiatry and seeing it do absolutely nothing useful about it. No one here is minimizing the problem of violence between people. What is at question here is psychiatry’s ability to address it. Their track record is abysmal.

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  5. As one dealing with a literal identity (name, SS#, email, etc.) computer/phone/email/name hacker/theft issue. I will say it is an insane situation, when one is dealing with people who want to steal more than all my work, including my name … more than everything, according to an appalling take a percentage of gross/conservatorship contract, I refused to sign … that was handed to me, by a non-clinical psychologist (also visual artist).

    So, most definitely, some people are insanely jealous … but I still don’t believe in the DSM “BS.”

    And identity theft is a felony, so what would be wiser, would be for the FBI to actually do their job … which they somewhat did do, when I dropped off medical evidence of a now FBI convicted doctor’s crimes (his psychiatrist “partner” was not arrested). I hope the FBI does their job again.

    Jealousy is a nasty human trait … infinitely worse than mere grief.

    “But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.”

    “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.”

    “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.”

    “For jealousy makes a man furious, and he will not spare when he takes revenge.” Indeed, so true.

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