Fetterman breaks silence on depression struggles after hospital release

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) detailed his struggles with depression and the "downward spiral" after his November election that led to his recent six week hospitalization in a new interview.

Fetterman's office said Friday that the senator had been released from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where he had been receiving treatment for "major depression." A preview of the senator's interview with CBS Sunday Morning showed Fetterman explaining how his 2022 victory exacerbated his symptoms, which came five months after he suffered a near-fatal stroke that caused debilitating auditory processing problems.

"It’s like, you just won the biggest, you know, race in the country," the 53-year-old Democrat told veteran journalist Jane Pauley. "And the whole thing about depression 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."

“I had stopped leaving my bed,” he continued. “I had stopped eating. I was dropping weight. I had stopped engaging some of the things that I love in my life.”