Fetterman Checks In to Hospital for Treatment of Clinical Depression

WASHINGTON — Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, who was hospitalized last week after feeling lightheaded, checked himself in to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Wednesday night to receive treatment for clinical depression, his office said on Thursday.

The decision to seek psychiatric help underscored the profound challenges, both physical and emotional, that Mr. Fetterman has been dealing with since entering the Senate last month after a life-threatening stroke last year, a transition that has been made vastly more difficult by the strains of his recovery.

“While John has experienced depression off and on throughout his life, it only became severe in recent weeks,” Adam Jentleson, his chief of staff, said in a statement. He said that Dr. Brian P. Monahan, the attending physician of Congress, had evaluated Mr. Fetterman on Monday and recommended he be admitted to Walter Reed for treatment for clinical depression.

“John agreed, and he is receiving treatment on a voluntary basis,” Mr. Jentleson said.

His decision to do so could place Mr. Fetterman — who was dogged by questions about his health and fitness to serve in the Senate throughout his campaign — at the center of a national conversation about mental health struggles that has become more public and urgent since the pandemic began.

That is not a role he naturally would have sought.

“After what he’s been through in the past year, there’s probably no one who wanted to talk about his own health less than John,” his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, said in an email to supporters. “It’s not easy for anyone to be open about mental health challenges. But I am so proud of him for asking for help and taking steps to get the care he needs.”

Ms. Fetterman wrote that “our family is in for some difficult days ahead, and we ask for your compassion on the path to recovery,” and added that she was “sad, and worried, as any wife and mother would be.”

For now, aides said, the primary focus is on his recovery. It is not yet clear how long Mr. Fetterman, 53, will stay at Walter Reed, though aides anticipate it will be longer than a few days.

The 118th Congress is underway, with Republicans controlling the House and Democrats holding the Senate.

Since January, Mr. Fetterman has been trying to dig into his new job, attending caucus meetings and committee hearings, meeting with constituent groups and attending high-profile events like President Biden’s State of the Union address this month. He has been living alone in Washington during the week, while his wife and three children remain in Braddock, Pa.

The Senate and his colleagues in Washington have been trying to adjust with him: The sergeant-at-arms has arranged for live audio-to-text transcription for Mr. Fetterman’s committees and installed a monitor at his desk so he can follow proceedings with closed captioning. His Democratic colleagues in the Senate have been growing accustomed to communicating with him through a tablet that transcribes their words, technology he needs because he suffers from auditory processing issues associated with his stroke.

But Mr. Fetterman has also been quietly struggling on a psychological level that is less obvious and harder for his colleagues to accommodate.

Mr. Fetterman was admitted to George Washington University Hospital last week after feeling unwell during a daylong Senate Democratic retreat. He spent two days in the stroke unit, where he underwent an M.R.I. and other tests that ruled out another stroke and remained free of any seizures, a spokesman said. But the episode convinced Mr. Fetterman and his closest aides that he needed a better plan to take care of himself physically and emotionally.

After the life-changing stroke, days before the Democratic primary last year, Mr. Fetterman briefly pared down his schedule to recover. But he continued his campaign in one of the most competitive and closely watched Senate races in the nation.

Now, the possibility that he may have missed out on a crucial recovery period has become a source of pain and frustration for Mr. Fetterman and people close to him, who fear that he may suffer long-term and potentially permanent repercussions. His schedule as a freshman senator has meant that he has continued to push himself in ways that people close to him worry are detrimental.

Dr. Eric Lenze, the head of the psychiatry department at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, described post-stroke depression as “very common, often very serious and, maybe most importantly, actually really treatable.” He said depression affects one in three people recovering from a stroke but added that controlled clinical trials have found that “it’s a very treatable condition, not just on the symptoms of depression but on one’s functioning.”

On Thursday, Mr. Fetterman’s colleagues rallied around him.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said he was confident Mr. Fetterman would be able to serve his full term despite the challenges.

“This is an unimaginable challenge that he has faced in life,” Mr. Durbin said. “He deserves the very best in professional care, and I am sure he will get it.”

He added that the country was evolving in its understanding of mental health, in part because of veterans who served in Iraq and other combat zones who have experienced profound psychological problems upon returning.

“Mental illness was considered a curse, not a medical problem — thank God that has changed,” Mr. Durbin said. “There isn’t a single family that isn’t touched by it. And those who are touched by it and succeed really are very honest about it. I’m glad John has done that.”

That kind of support would have been unthinkable a few decades ago.

Thomas F. Eagleton was forced to drop off the Democratic presidential ticket in 1972 after revelations that he had been treated for mental illness. Mr. Eagleton, who was then a Democratic senator, had been chosen as Senator George McGovern’s running mate that year, but he did not share with his team while being vetted that he had been hospitalized for depression and that his treatment involved electroshock therapy.

In an interview in 2006, Mr. McGovern said he regretted the decision to remove Mr. Eagleton from the ticket, saying, “I didn’t know anything about mental illness — nobody did.”

During the Senate race last year in Pennsylvania, his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, seized on the issue of Mr. Fetterman’s health in an attempt to revive his struggling candidacy. He was not the only one; Republicans and conservative talk show hosts relentlessly attacked Mr. Fetterman and questioned whether he was fit to serve.

At the time, Mr. Fetterman said he was recovering quickly and living a normal life. His campaign aides insisted he was healthier than a vast majority of the aging Senate.

“I’m running a perfectly normal campaign,” Mr. Fetterman said in an interview with The New York Times in September. At another point he added, “I keep getting better and better, and I’m living a perfectly normal life.”

Carl Hulse contributed reporting.