My new cover story in TIME is a profile of Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who opened up about his recent treatment for depression in a series of emotional interviews—the most extensive he has given since his election and treatment.
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. He didn’t actively contemplate suicide, he tells me, but he would have welcomed death if it came. “If the doctor said, oh, by the way, you have six months left, I would have been like, OK, whatever,” he says. “That’s how bleak it was.” He considers himself lucky to have survived.
So badly out-of-date is our conversation about politicians and mental illness that the still-cited reference point is the 1972 ouster of Sen. Thomas Eagleton from the Democratic presidential ticket. Fetterman, by speaking openly and contemporaneously about what he’s going through, could create a turning point.
Lawmakers from both parties expressed support, in public and private. “Heidi & I are lifting John up in prayer. Mental illness is real & serious,” tweeted Texas Republican Ted Cruz. Tina Smith, the Minnesota Democrat, brought doughnuts to his staff, who were soon overwhelmed with similar gifts from Republicans and Democrats alike. Republican Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, Fetterman’s neighbor in the Capitol basement, was among the first colleagues to visit him in the hospital. (Though both have moved to better offices, their bond endures: crossing paths in a Capitol tunnel one recent afternoon, Fetterman yelled, “Alabama!” and gave her a fist bump.) “Unsolicited, so many colleagues have expressed both publicly and privately their appreciation that he did this,” says Democratic Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, who notes that the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath triggered a widespread mental-health crisis that the nation is struggling to address. “A lot of citizens have too. It was a powerful and a helpful thing that he did.”
Read the piece here, with photos (including the outtake above) by the wonderful Shuran Huang and a cover portrait by Greg Kahn.