Fetterman says Senate debate performance sent him into deep depression

U.S. Sen. John Fetterman shared the details of the inner turmoil that led him to seek treatment for depression earlier this year with Time magazine in a story published Thursday.

The Pennsylvania Democrat told Time national political correspondent Molly Ball that his stilted performance in the Oct. 25, 2022, debate versus Republican opponent Mehmet Oz was the tipping point that sent him into a deep depression.

After suffering a stroke in May 2022, Fetterman was still coming to grips with the speaking and hearing issues that continue to hinder his ability to clearly communicate at times.

Fetterman’s stumbling verbal performance in the debate had supporters worried he’d lost the Senate race that night, but he said he took it harder.

“I knew at that moment that I was going to be considered — consider myself — like, a national embarrassment,” he told Ball.

The debate debacle was not the fatal blow to his campaign that Democrats feared — he defeated Oz by 5 percentage points in November — but it pushed him deeper into depression, which many stroke victims grapple with as they deal with the aftereffects.

At home in Braddock, Allegheny County, Fetterman would not get out of bed for family meals, Ball wrote, and he said his three children sensed things were not right as Christmas approached.

“They realized that something was really wrong, and they started to get more and more scared,” Fetterman said. “And I couldn’t articulate to them, because I couldn’t really articulate it to myself at this point, what was going on.”

Ball wrote that Fetterman was “gaunt, listless, barely able to function” by the time his family and close staffers convinced him in February to seek in-patient treatment at Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Maryland.

Fetterman told Ball that he did not consider suicide, but he did not fear dying.

“If the doctor said, ‘Oh, by the way, you have six months left,’ I would have been like, ‘OK, whatever,’” Fetterman said. “That’s how bleak it was.”

Now, Ball wrote, Fetterman has become a role model and inspiration for those struggling with mental health issues and a vocal proponent of the treatment that he said saved his life.

“My message is, I don’t care if you’re a Trumper, MAGA, or hard leftist, or anyone in between,” Fetterman said. “Depression comes across the spectrum, and get help with it.”

Illustrating that point, Ball describes an encounter Fetterman had at Pittsburgh’s Pride Parade in June with a female Teamster worker who gives him a hug. Diane DeGregorio, told Ball that she suffers from depression but it is not an issue people want to talk about.

“Hopefully, with him admitting it and getting treated,” DeGregorio said, “it lets more people know that it’s OK to say you have a problem.”