Political reaction to John Fetterman’s depression today is a far cry from Tom Eagleton’s in 1972
The news that the freshman Pennsylvania senator checked himself into Walter Reed Medical Center prompted a torrent of supportive messages from other elected officials.
By MIKE WERESCHAGIN, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Fifty years after a mental health diagnosis sank the national political hopes of one of the country’s most prominent politicians, U.S. Sen. John Fetterman’s announcement that he has hospitalized himself for clinical depression unleashed a starkly different reaction.
The news Thursday that the freshman Pennsylvania Democrat checked himself into Walter Reed Medical Center on Wednesday — a week after being hospitalized for feeling lightheaded and 10 months after a nearly fatal stroke — prompted a torrent of supportive messages from other elected officials. Some spoke publicly about their own struggles with mental health.
“Like millions of Pennsylvanians, I’ve struggled with major depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation my entire life,” state Rep. Mike Schlossberg, D-Lehigh, wrote Thursday on Twitter.
U.S. Rep. Susan Wild, a fellow Lehigh County Democrat, referred to her own partner’s 2019 suicide in a statement supporting Mr. Fetterman.
Across state lines in New York, U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres tweeted his admiration for Mr. Fetterman’s decision to seek treatment and added: “Back in 2010, I was hospitalized for depression. I would not be alive, let alone in Congress, were it not for mental health care.”
The outpouring of support from Democrats — and mostly silence from Mr. Fetterman’s political opponents — contrasts sharply with the attacks aimed at the late U.S. Sen. Thomas Eagleton, who dropped off the 1972 Democratic presidential ticket as George McGovern’s running mate after his own depression diagnosis became public.
Sens. Thomas Eagleton (left) and George McGovern celebrate their candidacy for vice president and president, respectively, at the Democratic National Convention in 1972. AP photo
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Unlike Mr. Fetterman, Mr. Eagleton had tried to keep his hospitalizations a secret, hoping to avoid the stigma that mental health advocates say can still haunt those battling depression, trauma, and other psychological problems.
“A lot of us look at that story as something from the dark ages,” said Kristin Kanthak, a political science professor at the University of Pittsburgh whose research has focused on the ways groups of people are represented in government.
She pointed to Jason Kander, an Afghanistan war veteran and once-rising political star who dropped out of the Kansas City mayor’s race in 2018 to seek treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Seeing people who project a traditional image of strength — a military record for Mr. Kander, a towering stature, tattooed arms and workaday wardrobe for Mr. Fetterman — is helping shift attitudes about mental health in the public arena, she said.
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