“Depression can absolutely convince you that you actually lost”
From The Insider
The first-term Pennsylvania Democrat, who was discharged from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Friday, told CBS “Sunday Morning” host Jane Pauley two days before returning home that even though he had won the hard-fought 2022 Senate race against Republican nominee Mehmet Oz, the depression that he experienced made him feel otherwise.
Fetterman revealed that between the November 2022 election and his swearing-in ceremony in January 2023, his depression began to accelerate.
Fetterman said that while he “never had any self-harm” brought on by his depression, he previously felt “indifferent” about his health. “If the doctor said, ‘Gee, you have 18 months to live,’ I’d be like, ‘Yeah, okay, well that’s how things go,'” he remarked.
Fetterman, the former mayor of Braddock, Pa., and the state’s lieutenant governor at the time of his Senate campaign launch, had a stroke last May just days before the Democratic primary. But he still easily prevailed in the primary, buoyed by strong support in urban, suburban, and rural areas throughout the Commonwealth. In the lead-up to the general election, Fetterman campaigned as he battled lingering auditory processing issues from the stroke, and participated in a debate with Oz — under the glare of frequent attacks from Oz’s campaign and Republican officials who questioned the Democratic nominee’s fitness for office.
Insider