Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) opened up about his struggle with depression in an interview with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Monday and encouraged viewers struggling with their own mental health to seek treatment.
On his struggle with depression after winning the 2022 Pennsylvania Senate election, Fetterman said, “That’s what’s so insidious about depression… You might win, and it still feels like you lose.”
“Winning doesn’t mean that it still didn’t hurt still,” he explained, adding that he watched his struggle start to hurt his children “because they were confused.”
Fetterman said that he decided to seek treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in February, just a month after he took office, because he realized, “If I don’t do something to claim my life, this could be, you know, tragic.”
The senator also argued no one was “too macho” to seek treatment for depression and warned, “The only person you’re really going to hurt more than anyone else is actually your family.”
“It nearly ruined me, and I know it put my family through a lot of pain,” he said.
“This is not a Democratic issue. This is not a Republican issue. This isn’t a hard right, hard left… this was just a human issue. There’s somebody living right now in a red county that desperately needs mental health, and there is a person in a blue county that needs to make somebody to speak to because they’re thinking of harming themselves, you know, and we all need something created as a national priority.”
Fetterman — who checked out of Walter Reed Army Medical Center at the end of March — concluded by calling on viewers who were struggling with their mental health to seek treatment.
“I’m begging you, please go look for your treatment. It works, and it’s what saved me from my anguish,” he said.
Last month, in his first television interview since his hospitalization, Fetterman told CBS Sunday Morning‘s Jane Pauley that he had stopped eating, had lost weight, and couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed before his treatment.
Watch above via MSNBC.
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