EDITORIAL: Fetterman’s transparency about his mental health issues will do a lot of good
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman’s Senate campaign staff was not very transparent about the stroke that took him off the campaign trail for much of last summer.
His detailed medical records were not released. Voters didn’t learn about the lingering auditory processing issues caused by the stroke until September.
The former lieutenant governor has chosen a different — much more candid — approach regarding his mental health struggles.
When he checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, his chief of staff revealed in a statement that Fetterman had “experienced depression off and on throughout his life,” but it had become “severe in recent weeks.”
And the news release about his discharge from Walter Reed noted the use of medication therapies to treat his depression. It also noted his improved mood, “brighter affect and improved motivation, self-attitude, and engagement with others” as those and other therapies began to have an effect.
We learned that Fetterman had “expressed a firm commitment to treatment over the long term.”
We also learned that hearing tests had identified Fetterman’s significant hearing loss and that he was fitted with hearing aids. This revelation was in itself a public service. Research has shown that hearing loss can increase a person’s risk of developing a mental health disorder such as depression. And men, in particular, often are unwilling to wear hearing aids.
In the statement, Fetterman expressed gratitude to his treatment team at Walter Reed. “The care they provided changed my life. … I want everyone to know that depression is treatable, and treatment works. This isn’t about politics — right now there are people who are suffering with depression in red counties and blue counties. If you need help, please get help.”
This transparency may do more good than any legislation Fetterman ever will see passed in the Senate.
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, an estimated 26% of Americans ages 18 and older — about 1 in 4 adults — suffers from a diagnosable mental health disorder in a given year.
More than half of adults with a mental illness do not receive treatment, and nearly 60% of youths with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment, Mental Health America tells us. While mental health disorders are common, they are often not diagnosed; this leads to the kind of quiet despair with which Fetterman wrestled for years.
As was widely reported in articles about Fetterman, depression affects about a third of stroke survivors. Now, hopefully, more family members of stroke victims will know to watch carefully for signs of depression in their loved ones.
A previous history of depression — which Fetterman had — is a predictor of post-stroke depression, Dr. Nada El Husseini, an associate professor of neurology at Duke University, told the American Heart Association.
Research has shown that men often are reluctant to seek treatment for mental health disorders, including major depression. According to Mental Health America, more than 6 million men in the United States suffer depression each year, but male depression often goes undiagnosed, and men often downplay their symptoms. Social norms — including the expectation that they should just “man up” — discourage men from seeking help.
Fetterman has dispelled the notion that men should shoulder their mental health burdens silently.
He’s not the first to have done so, of course. Actor Dwayne Johnson publicly disclosed his mental health struggles several years ago, and tweeted in April 2018 that “depression never discriminates. Took me a long time to realize it but the key is to not be afraid to open up. Especially us dudes have a tendency to keep it in. You’re not alone.”
But Fetterman’s candor, especially in an interview with CBS “Sunday Morning” anchor Jane Pauley last Sunday, has been impressive.
He revealed that in the weeks after his election to the Senate, he had “stopped leaving my bed. I had stopped eating. I was dropping weight. I had stopped engaging some of the, most things that I love in my life.” Including family time.
He recalled an “incredibly sad moment” when his 14-year-old son couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t get out of bed. He spoke emotionally of his sadness at checking himself into Walter Reed on that son’s birthday. He wasn’t harming himself, but he said he felt “indifferent” to living.
Now, after treatment, he told Pauley, he feels hopeful for “the first time. … It’s a strange feeling for me to have.”
We wish everyone experiencing mental health issues had access to the intensive inpatient treatment Fetterman, as a senator, received at Walter Reed. We hope Fetterman takes that on as a legislative goal.
In the meantime, help is available, so please seek it if you need it.
– LNP/Lancaster Online