TIME's new cover: Senator JohnFetterman opens up about his battle with depression
hen he looks back on the past year—a year in which he nearly died, became a U.S. Senator, and nearly died again—it is the debate that John Fetterman identifies as the breaking point.
Fetterman has settled in to talk, through tears, about his treatment for and recovery from the severe depression that followed. In February, he checked into the neuropsychiatry unit at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside D.C., where he remained for more than six weeks. By the time he got there, he was a shell of himself—gaunt, listless, barely able to function. “I didn’t think I could be fixed,” he says.
Here his voice breaks; he wipes his eyes, takes a moment to compose himself. He has turned sideways and curled up in his chair, as if trying to shrink inside himself. “—Before it was too late,” he finally says. “Before some things could have—damage that can’t be undone. And I would just implore anybody to get help. Because it can work. It worked. And I’m so grateful.”The people closest
Left: Fetterman during his M.B.A. studies at the University of Connecticut; Right: Fetterman doing service work in the 1990sIrreverent, unpretentious, and progressive, the big man with the soft heart was catnip to coastal media, featured in glossy magazine profiles and on thought-leader panels. He was re-elected three times. In 2007, a formerly undocumented Brazilian immigrant, Gisele Barreto Almeida, wrote Fetterman a letter saying she admired his efforts. He invited her to visit Braddock.
On May 13, 2022—the Friday before the Tuesday primary election—Fetterman was in the car with Gisele, heading to a campaign event near Lancaster, when she noticed his face seemed to be drooping on one side. They drove straight to the hospital.Four days later Yet even many who sympathized wondered whether Fetterman was up to the job. The election’s lone debate loomed as the chance to prove himself. He prepared furiously. The format had never been a strength, but he did well enough in prep sessions that his camp felt optimistic.Fetterman now believes that debate will be remembered for decades as a debacle, like the time Dan Quayle couldn’t spell. His voice cracked; he stammered; he struggled to say his own name.
The winter was dark and cold. Fetterman’s D.C. apartment was in a basement. So was his temporary office suite in the Capitol. On Jan. 10, the New Yorkjournalist Blake Hounshell died by suicide at 44, leaving behind a wife and two young children. Fetterman had gotten to know Hounshell, a fellow stroke survivor, during the campaign. Hounshell had largely recovered from his stroke, but continued to suffer nerve pain that exacerbated the depression that had plagued him since he was a young man.
Williamson’s team gathered records from Fetterman’s doctors in D.C. and Pennsylvania and ran tests—“a 360-degree review of his cardiac health, neurologic health, mental state, behavior, and daily functioning,” as Williamson puts it. They found, among other things, that Fetterman’s hearing was severely diminished, exacerbating his auditory issues; he now wears hearing aids. Because he’d lost so much weight, his heart medications were at too high a dosage.
Recounting this memory at the house in Braddock, Fetterman pauses our conversation and lopes back to the bedroom to retrieve the Post-its. There are more than 100 of them, preserved in a wood frame. “I’m going to save these till the day I die,” he says, crying. “Their visit was really kind of a pivot, where I realized that this is a choice. You have the support, you have the medical community, you have therapy. And this was a catalyst that helped direct me to the way forward.
Williamson believes Fetterman’s openness about his struggles has the power to help countless others. In a recent Gallup survey, 18% of Americans said they have depression—a rate that has nearly doubled in the past decade. Studies have found that fewer than 10% of sufferers get psychiatric treatment. “We struggle in the health care world to message this condition to the public,” Williamson says.
That’s the idea, at least. But when Fetterman takes his seat and sets out to make his point, what comes out is less clear. “The Republicans want to give a work requirement for SNAP, for a hungry family has to have this kind of penalties, some kinds of word—working requirements,” he stammers.
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