Sen. John Fetterman Is My New Hero- And It Has Nothing To Do With Politics

When people are open about their struggle with mental illness, it shows that it can impact anyone

The fact that Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is a US Senator is apropos of nothing when it comes to depression. This is especially true when considering his health issues over the past year. After nearly losing his life due to a stroke in 2022, he still had an election to win for his Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

Not that Republicans were able or willing to provide anything in the way of compassion. They were determined to portray Fetterman as a broken man and thus unfit to serve in the Senate. After his stroke, Fetterman required special accommodations to process information, but he could function well enough to debate his Republican opponent. He showed that he was anything but broken.

Once he was sworn in, it quickly became apparent that something else was wrong. One in three stroke patients deals with depression, and Sen. Fetterman was the one. That he was a very public figure made his diagnosis and treatment a delicate matter, but he was decidedly matter-of-fact about it. He checked into Walter Reed Army Medical Center and received treatment for six weeks.

I’m someone who’s dealt with depression my entire life. I’ve also coped with ADD throughout life, though I wasn’t officially diagnosed until I was 55. Put those two things together, and the effect isn’t just twice as bad; it’s exponentially worse. So, yeah, I can relate to at least a small degree to what Sen. Fetterman has been trying to work through.

Twenty-one million Americans deal with significant depression. For Sen. Fetterman, coping with his diagnosis was complicated by being a US Senator and existing in a very public fishbowl. That he’s sharing his journey publicly is unique but not unprecedented. It IS, however, very important.

Fortunately, discussing mental health challenges is becoming more accessible and less traumatic. There’s less stigma associated with depression and related issues because more people have opened up about their experiences. As a result, the stigma associated with mental health issues has decreased significantly, and asking for help is no longer viewed as a sign of personal weakness.

But we still have a long way to go.

Asking for help is a sign of strength. It takes courage to recognize that you’re in a place you can’t navigate on your own. I finally had to take that step in my mid-20s, a few years after deciding to kill myself (and ultimately not following through). Four decades later, I’ve been through more counselors and medications than I can recall.

The good news is that I’m finally in a place where I know myself well enough to understand the warning signs. And I’m learning to be good to myself. That was a surprisingly hard lesson to learn…and it’s an ongoing process. There is, as they say, no finish line.

Senator John Fetterman from Pennsylvania was released from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on Friday, after spending six weeks there dealing with a major depressive episode. On Sunday, he appeared on "CBS Sunday Morning" to talk to Jane Pauley about what happened, how he's doing now, and how he ended up being severely depressed after winning a major election.

"It's like, you just won the biggest, you know, race in the country," he said. "And the whole thing about depression is, is that objectively, you may have won, but depression can absolutely convince you that you actually lost. And that's exactly what happened. And that was the start of a downward spiral."

One of the things Fetterman told Pauley was that he felt "agnostic" about living. That while he never had any inclination toward self harm, he felt indifferent about dying and that if someone told him he had 18 months to live, he would have shrugged. Pauley tried to explain this to the audience as depression existing in a different sphere from love, and that it had nothing to do with his love for his children or not wanting to be there for them.

I would argue that it did, because he went and got the help — and if that is not an act of love and of strength, I don't know what is.

Part of finding the strength to seek help is realizing how many people love and care about you. No matter who you are, if you stop and consider your life, there are far more people than you realize who love you and care about your well-being. For the longest time, I thought the world would be better off without me and that few people cared about me.

I know now how wrong I was and that my pain was lying to me. It’s an easy thing to focus on when you’re consumed by depression and feel your world turning to shit. No matter what, though, there are those who would be devastated by your loss. I found that by keeping that thought in the front of my mind, I was able to keep myself from doing something needlessly stupid.

That kind of feeling just has nothing to do with whether or not someone loves their kids or their spouse or anyone else. Depression, as Fetterman's wife Giselle pointed out in the interview, is not rational. Being unable to find the part of yourself that feels something about whether or not you wake up the next morning doesn't mean that part doesn't exist, it means you need help finding it. It's good that Fetterman got that help.

In recent years, we've been doing better (some of us anyway) about reducing the stigma around certain forms of mental illness, often just by talking about them and being open about them. I think people now are more likely to understand that a person having depression is not the same thing as someone just being overdramatic about sadness and that it doesn't mean that someone is "weak" — and attitudes like that feel pretty outdated.

Still, someone in Fetterman's position being as open about it as he's being is pretty radical. He joins a few other lawmakers who've been open about their mental health struggles. It's a big deal that he went and got help in such a visible way and that he's been open about the accommodations he needs to deal with that, about taking time off, as well as those he needs to deal with the side effects of the stroke he had last year. I will be glad to see him on the floor, kicking ass while visibly using those accommodations (like the closed captioning) and giving no fucks. It's important for people to see that.

In 1972, Sen. Thomas Eagleton (D-MO) was briefly George McGovern’s Vice-Presidential running mate. The McGovern campaign didn’t know that Sen. Eagleton had suffered from bouts of depression throughout his life. Some of those episodes required Eagleton to be hospitalized. This had always been kept secret from the public. And Sen. Eagleton chose to keep his history of depression from his running mate.

When Eagleton’s history of depression was revealed, it humiliated the McGovern campaign, and Eagleton was forced to withdraw from the Democratic ticket. Though a Time magazine poll at the time found that 77% of Americans said that Eagleton’s history of depression wouldn’t have impacted their vote, the press frequently referenced the electroshock therapy the Senator had undergone.

Ultimately, Sen. McGovern feared the attention paid to Sen. Eagleton’s history of depression would undermine his chances of winning the Presidency (In the end, it was Richard Nixon that undermined his shot at the Presidency).

Four decades on, things have changed for the better.

That kind of feeling just has nothing to do with whether or not someone loves their kids or their spouse or anyone else. Depression, as Fetterman's wife Giselle pointed out in the interview, is not rational. Being unable to find the part of yourself that feels something about whether or not you wake up the next morning doesn't mean that part doesn't exist, it means you need help finding it. It's good that Fetterman got that help.

In recent years, we've been doing better (some of us anyway) about reducing the stigma around certain forms of mental illness, often just by talking about them and being open about them. I think people now are more likely to understand that a person having depression is not the same thing as someone just being overdramatic about sadness and that it doesn't mean that someone is "weak" — and attitudes like that feel pretty outdated.

Still, someone in Fetterman's position being as open about it as he's being is pretty radical. He joins a few other lawmakers who've been open about their mental health struggles. It's a big deal that he went and got help in such a visible way and that he's been open about the accommodations he needs to deal with that, about taking time off, as well as those he needs to deal with the side effects of the stroke he had last year. I will be glad to see him on the floor, kicking ass while visibly using those accommodations (like the closed captioning) and giving no fucks. It's important for people to see that.

When people in the public eye openly discuss their depression it helps reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness. No matter where one is in life or how successful or famous one is, mental illness can still be part of the picture. Whether you’re a Senator, a professional athlete, or a grocery clerk, mental illness doesn’t discriminate.

Sen. Fetterman’s brain had already taken a serious hit due to his severe stroke. Combine that with the pressures of a campaign and then assuming his new position in the Senate, and it’s not hard to imagine how and why depression would become part of the picture.

It's worth noting that depression is also, in fact, a very common side effect of strokes.

"Depression is a common experience for stroke survivors," according to the American Stroke Association. "It’s often caused by biochemical changes in the brain. When the brain is injured, the survivor may not be able to feel positive emotions."

“The care that the experts at Walter Reed provided changed my life,” Fetterman wrote in a statement on Friday. “This isn’t about politics — right now there are people who are suffering with depression in red counties and blue counties. If you need help, please get help.”

This is progress, but we’re still not where we need to be…or should be. Every American should have access to mental health care, which still isn’t the case. For many Americans, accessing mental health care can be exceedingly difficult, and for others, well nigh impossible.

I’m going to be grateful for the progress we’ve made over the past four decades and optimistic that we’re on the path to yet more evolution in how we view mental illness and our ability to access mental health care. Perhaps soon all Americans will have access to affordable mental health care.

That would be a giant step forward.

As Sen. Fetterman said about himself, “The message isn’t political. I’m just someone suffering from depression.” And depression doesn’t discriminate. It can touch anyone anytime for any reason…or no reason at all. It’s insidious and difficult to understand, and its causes can vary.

The good news is that there is hope. Mental illness may not be “curable,” not in the traditional medical sense, but one can learn how to cope and adjust. There are tools one can use to learn to live with it. Mental illness need not define a person any more than it needs to dominate and consume a person’s life.

I have a mental illness, and I have ADD. They’re separate and yet interrelated. They drive me nuts and piss me off, but they’re part and parcel of who I am. I can no more rid myself of my depression or ADD than I can my skin pigment, but I’ve learned that they don’t define me.

They may aggravate me mightily at times- and they do- but that’s the cross I bear. As much as I might wish I were “normal” or that I could do things and process information like “normal” people, I know that’s never going to be me. So, I can let that frustrate me or learn to manage the frustration and do my best with what I have to work with.

Besides, some of the world’s most creative people have also been diagnosed with ADD or have shown behavioral characteristics consistent with ADD. So, it would appear I’m in good company.

For now, I’m grateful to Sen. Fetterman for being willing to discuss his depression so publicly. When more people are open about their mental health journey, it can only help reduce the stigma associated with mental illness. And hopefully, that will help to reduce the incidence of suicide over time.

I don’t imagine Sen. Fetterman sees himself as a hero, but what he’s doing is heroic. If he runs for re-election, Republicans will, of course, use his mental illness against him. It’s sad and sick, but that’s the nature of GOP politics.

Sen. John Fetterman has chosen to take discussing mental illness beyond partisan politics, and for that, he should be commended. His courage will help to make America better in the long run.