In an interview that aired Sunday, freshman Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said he was in remission for depression for the first time in his life after a weeks long stay at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that began just over a month into his term.

What You Need To Know

  • In an interview that aired Sunday, freshman Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said he was in remission for depression for the first time in his life after a weeks long stay at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that began just over a month into his term

  • “Right now there are people who are suffering with depression in red counties and blue counties. If you need help, please get help,” the senator urged Americans in a tweet after being released from the hospital Friday

  • According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in six adults will suffer from depression at some point in their life, with about 16 million American adults affected every year

  • The extraordinary public disclosure of his depression comes in the context of the United States’ long history of politicians struggling with their mental health behind closed doors, for fear of the stigma that still surrounds such conditions today

“My message right now isn’t political. I’m just somebody that’s suffering from depression,” Fetterman told CBS News’ Jane Pauley earlier this week before being discharged. “I had stopped leaving my bed, I stopped eating, dropping weight. I stopped engaging some of the most things that I love in my life.”

“Right now there are people who are suffering with depression in red counties and blue counties. If you need help, please get help,” the senator urged Americans in a tweet after being released from the hospital Friday.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in six adults will suffer from depression at some point in their life, with about 16 million American adults affected every year.

The extraordinary public disclosure of his depression comes in the context of the United States’ long history of politicians struggling with their mental health behind closed doors, for fear of the stigma that still surrounds such conditions today.

In 1972, Sen. Thomas Eagleton, D-Mo., was the Democratic nominee for vice president, but dropped out after revealing he had been treated for clinical depression.

And a 2006 review of biographical materials by Duke University professors concluded 49% of presidents between 1776 and 1974 “met criteria suggesting psychiatric disorder,” the most common being depression. Abraham Lincoln was believed to be depressed his whole adult life, historians have written.

But few politicians have been as candid about their mental health and recovery as Fetterman has been in recent weeks.

Fetterman, who flipped the Republican-held Senate seat in November of last year after suffering a stroke months earlier, said his staff, family, and fellow lawmakers had noticed he was not himself even before he took office in January.

Studies have shown one in three stroke survivors suffer from depression.

“It's like you just won the biggest race in the country. And the whole thing about depression is, is that objectively, you may have won, but depression can actually convince you that you actually lost and that's exactly what happened,” Fetterman said in the interview, which aired Sunday. “And that was the start of a downward spiral.”

“He just became the senator, he’s married to me, he has amazing kids and he’s still depressed. And I think the outside would look and say, ‘how does this happen?’ But depression doesn't necessarily make sense, right? It's not rational,” his wife, Gisele, added. 

On Feb. 15, his 14-year-old son’s birthday, Fetterman checked into Walter Reed. 

“I had a conversation with my 14-year-old and he said ‘dad, what’s wrong? We’re great. We’re here. And you won,’” Fetterman recalled. “An incredibly sad moment where my 14-year-old can’t possibly understand why you can’t get out of your bed.”

The senator said he was “definitely depressed” on Jan. 3, when he officially became a Senator. And then his fellow senators began noticing their 6’8 tall colleague wasn’t eating. He said he felt robotic and he “just showed up where my staff said.”

“I never had any self-harm, but I was indifferent, though,” Fetterman said about whether he wanted to keep living. “If the doctor said, ‘gee, you have 18 months to live,” I’d be like, ‘yeah, okay, well that’s how things go.’”

In a statement after he was released from the hospital Friday, Fetterman said he was prescribed medication for his depression and is now wearing hearing aids to help with hearing loss. He continues to rely on a real-time transcription tool during interviews and in other settings due to auditory processing issues, the result of his stroke.

The former lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania who skyrocketed to national notoriety during his campaign against Republican doctor and TV personality Mehmet Oz, Fetterman is looking to the future no further than serving as senator. Presidential aspirations were not something he was interested in discussing just three months into his six-year term and after a six week stint in a hospital.

“My aspiration is to take my son to the restaurant that we were supposed to go during his birthday but couldn't because I had checked myself in for depression,” Fetterman said. “And being the kind of dad, the kind of husband and the kind of senator that Pennsylvania deserves, you know, that's truly that's what my aspiration is.”

Fetterman is set to return to the Senate the week of April 17.