Senator John Fetterman said in a new interview with People Magazine that attacks from his Republican opponent Mehmet Oz and reviews after their sole debate in the Pennsylvania Senate race worsened his depression.
Mr Fetterman spoke with People after he underwent treatment at Walter Reed Medical Center for depression. Mr Fetterman suffered from a stroke during the 2022 Senate race and had dealt with depression long before.
But Mr Fetterman said that his mental health nosedived after his 25 October debate with the Republican retired physician and television host. Dr Oz had criticised Mr Fetterman for avoiding debating him leading up to the confrontation.
“I knew going into this debate that millions of people were going to be watching,” he said. “And it wasn't even just for Pennsylvanians watching, this would be kind of national ... [it] would be living in history.”
Mr Fetterman, who hadn’t fully recovered from his May stroke, sometimes mashed words together and had difficulty speaking, and he and his campaign came prepared for the debate to scrutinised.
“But I was still in recovery from the stroke," he said. "It would be trying to run a marathon with a broken ankle.”
Afterward, many called Mr Fetterman’s debate a “disaster” or said he lost the matchup.
“I don't have any regrets because I believe that I had a responsibility to do the debate, but after that point, to me, that was where the depression really started to set in,” he said.
Mr Fetterman eventually won the race but his wife Gisele Fetterman said he still felt depressed.
“After he won, you expect someone to be at their highest and really happy and celebratory,” she said. “And after winning, he seemed to be at the lowest. That was, for me, the moment of concern.”
Eventually, he stopped eating and even missing doses of his heart medication he needed to recover from his stroke.
On 16 February, he checked into Walter Reed’s neuropathy unit.
Mr Fetterman returned to the Senate on Monday and on Wednesday, presided over his first Senate hearing as chairman for the Senate Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics and Research.
