CBS NEWS At six foot eight, Sen. John Fetterman is still a formidable man, despite two serious assaults on his health in less than a year: he suffered a stroke last May, and after a private struggle for years, in mid-February he entered Walter Reed for treatment of depression.
He talked there with “Sunday Morning” anchor Jane Pauley two days before being discharged this past week.
“I will be going home. [It will] be the first time ever to be in remission with my depression,” he said. “And I can’t wait to [see] what it really feels like, to take it all in, and to start making up any lost time.”
To colleagues, he’d seemed lost, even at his swearing-in. Later, Dr. David Williamson recognized major depression. A neuropsychiatrist, Williamson has been treating Fetterman.
“He had markedly reduced motivation and drive,” Williamson said. “The RPM in the brain, how fast you think and how clearly you think, is very substantially degraded when patients get depressed.”
“It’s reversible?” asked Pauley.
“It’s certainly reversible, yes.”
One-in-three stroke patients develops depression. Twenty-one million American adults have experienced major depression. What makes John Fetterman’s diagnosis unique (but not unprecedented) is a politician sharing it publicly.
“My message right now isn’t political,” he said. “I’m just somebody that’s suffering from depression.”
A former steel town outside Pittsburgh, population of less than 2,000, with high unemployment and low income, Braddock put Fetterman on the map – and vice versa.
The towering mayor with a Harvard degree and a penchant for hoodies and shorts became a rising political star – and an unlikely darling of the fashion world.
GQ magazine dubbed Fetterman an “American taste god.” And then, The New York Times declared Fetterman one of the paper’s most stylish people of 2022, alongside Beyoncé and Brad Pitt.
“It was an edgy, modern look,” said Pauley …
