Fetterman opens up about depression in first interview since his hospitalization

John Fetterman had stopped eating, couldn’t get out of bed, and felt indifferent about life, he said in his first TV interview about his major struggle with depression and the optimism he now feels after seeking treatment.

Fetterman’s candid and at times emotional interview aired on CBS Sunday Morning and was taped last week, two days before Fetterman left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he spent six weeks undergoing treatment for depression.

“You just won the biggest race in the country and the whole thing about depression is that objectively you may have won but depression can absolutely convince you that you actually lost,” Fetterman told CBS’s Jane Pauley. “And that’s exactly what happened and that was the start of a downward spiral.”

The Pennsylvania Democrat was hospitalized for major depression at Walter Reed in mid-February. Fetterman had already been recovering from a stroke he suffered in May 2022. One in three stroke survivors is diagnosed with depression. He’s now back home in Braddock, a small town outside of Pittsburgh, and in remission, he said. He’s spending time with his wife, Gisele, and their three children ages 8 to 14. He’ll return to the Senate when the chamber is back in session the week of April 17.

“I will be going home and it’ll be the first time ever to be in remission with my depression,” said Fetterman, who has said he suffered with the depression off and on throughout his life. “I can’t wait to ... take it all in and to start making up any lost time.”

Pauley also spoke with David Williamson, the neuropsychiatry chief and medical director at Walter Reed who oversaw Fetterman’s care. Williamson has previously said in a release distributed by Fetterman’s staff that Fetterman’s depression was treated with medication. He said the senator’s mood improved, and he engaged with others more, and ate and drank well. Fetterman also read a book about depression to better understand the disorder.

Williamson told Pauley that “how fast you think and how clearly you think is very substantially degraded when patients get depressed.”

“It’s reversible?” Pauley asked.

“It’s certainly reversible,” Williamson said.

Fetterman recalled a “robotic” phase of going through the motions of life, which included feeling detached at his inauguration and at a Democratic retreat when colleagues asked him why he wasn’t eating. He choked up talking about his inability to get out of bed even when his son tried to cheer him up, worried about him.

“He said, ‘Dad what’s wrong? We’re great, we’re here and you won,’ an incredibly sad moment where my 14-year-old can’t possibly understand why you can’t get out of bed,” Fetterman said. He wound up checking into the hospital on his son’s birthday.

“As it was described to me you were ‘agnostic’ about the question of living or not at that time,” Pauley said.

“I never had any self-harm but I was indifferent, though,” Fetterman said.

Gisele Fetterman sat beside her husband for part of the interview, holding his hand. She told Pauley that from the outside looking in his situation might be hard to understand.

“He just became the senator, he’s married to me, and he has amazing kids and he’s still depressed,” she said. “But depression doesn’t necessarily make sense.”

Asked about political aspirations beyond the Senate, Fetterman said he’s focused on being a father, a husband and a senator.

An early priority is taking his son out for the birthday dinner he missed.