Sen. John Fetterman Is Ready to Talk About His Mental Health: 'I Want People to Hear This' (Exclusive)

As soon as John Fetterman suffered a stroke on the campaign trail for U.S. Senate last May, he told his family and his staff that he would be going public with the news. With mere days left till the primary election and an even tougher general election ahead if he were to advance, he tweeted from the hospital and explained the situation, aware that it could cost him necessary votes.

In the year that's followed, Fetterman has navigated a difficult stroke recovery, an onslaught of ableist attacks, and one of the most expensive Senate races in history to ultimately flip one of Pennsylvania's seats blue. He also, in an unusually public manner for a politician, admitted himself to the hospital for a severe case of depression — just one month after being sworn in to Congress.

Shortly after returning home from a 44-day stay in Walter Reed Medical Center's neuropsychiatry unit, Fetterman graciously welcomes PEOPLE into his Braddock, Pennsylvania, home. It's the first time the freshman senator and his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, are speaking with the media since he was discharged, and one of the first real conversations they are publicly having about his mental health.

Feeling in many ways transformed, Fetterman, 53, sits down on the couch in his signature Carhartt hoodie and basketball shorts, leans forward and inhales. He's ready to talk.

'A Little Melancholic'

For years Fetterman handled depression like many people do — that is to say he didn't pay it much attention, accepting as a young man that feeling low was an insoluble element of his personality. "I always treated my depression like I did with losing my hair," he says. "It's just kind of like, 'Oh yeah, that's just part of my makeup.'"

It was Gisele, 41, who broached the subject of mental health with her husband in the early years of their marriage, suggesting that he was displaying signs of depression.

Fetterman was the rather successful mayor of Braddock at the time — beginning to earn national attention thanks to his big dreams for the small industrial town — and he remembers pushing back on the idea that he had a diagnosable issue, rebutting, I'm just a little melancholic. Maybe a little blue.

"I never thought that it was significant enough to go get help," he recalls. "And I, of course, regret that I did not do that."

Gisele learned in time that she didn't hold the power to fix Fetterman's mental health, but it was a process to adopt that mentality. "In the beginning of our relationship, it was like, 'Why is he so sad all the time? I'm amazing!'" she says. "I think that's what people do: They blame themselves, but the reality is not one person should be who makes someone better. We should not carry that weight and the responsibility."

A big part of that realization came from Gisele's own research, which she says began 12 years ago. "I read every book on depression," she says, "and I tried to get him to read those books." He didn't, back then, and she didn't force him.

"You could do everything to support someone, but you can't get them through the door," she says. "He had to do that hard part himself."

A Storm Brewing

Fetterman, who served as mayor of Braddock for 13 years, eventually began looking to heighten his impact. He was elected as Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor in 2018, defeating the incumbent Democrat in a primary election to get on the gubernatorial ticket. In early 2021, a few months after Republican Sen. Pat Toomey announced his intention to retire, Fetterman declared candidacy for United States Senate, intent on filling the vacant seat.

Fetterman and Gisele knew that the Senate campaign would not be easy, or kind. (As the second lady of Pennsylvania, Gisele — who was born in Brazil — made headlines for opening up about a racially charged verbal assault, when a woman who recognized her as Fetterman's wife spewed a racial slur at her outside of their local grocery store.)

Fetterman's team decided to approach the Senate campaign with the second family's signature lightheartedness, routinely going viral for highlighting the weaknesses of his opponent, celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, in clever and outlandish ways. "[It was] about trying to be funny and help people realize that you don't actually have to be quite so ugly," Fetterman recalls of the campaign strategy.

Polling long suggested that Fetterman was favored to defeat Oz, even as he spoke candidly about some of the restraints he was facing amid his stroke recovery. Then funding began pouring into Oz's campaign as Election Day neared to give Republicans a fighting chance at retaining the seat. That's when things started "getting really, really ugly," Fetterman says, equating the attacks to having "a $100 million blow torch turned on you."

The attacks cut deep for him and his family, targeting his health and fitness to serve in Congress, and opened a door for media and the public at large to do the same, often veering into ableist territory by failing to acknowledge that the lingering side effects of his stroke would not prevent him from making the important decisions a senator is tasked with.

One insult he heard on multiple occasions still appears painful for him to repeat: being called a "vegetable."

"These kinds of personal things accelerated the depression," he says, though it wasn't until the nationally televised debate with Oz that something "seismic" shifted in his mental health.

The Silent Fall

"I'll never forget the date. It was October 25," Fetterman says, of course referring to the debate that came on the heels of vicious attacks on his mental fitness and a late surge in polls for Oz. "I knew going into this debate that millions of people were going to be watching. And it wasn't even just for Pennsylvanians watching, this would be kind of national ... [it] would be living in history."

Fetterman and his team prepared, prepared and prepared some more, understanding that any misspeak or visible struggle would be picked apart. "But I was still in recovery from the stroke," he reminds. "It would be trying to run a marathon with a broken ankle."

Reviews of his performance on the debate stage included words like "disaster," he remembers. "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."

By election night, polls suggested that the race could go either way, and when he secured the victory in the wee hours of the morning, he says he felt relieved that he didn't let his supporters down. But standing at a podium with fans cheering his name and his family by his side, he wasn't happy.

"After he won, you expect someone to be at their highest and really happy and celebratory," Gisele says. "And after winning, he seemed to be at the lowest. That was, for me, the moment of concern."

With cameras finally turned away after the election wrapped, Fetterman sank into his lowest place, rarely leaving bed.

"I literally stopped eating and drinking and I wasn't functional," he says, noting that he also began missing doses of his heart medication, which was important for his health after the stroke.

Through tears, he adds: "There wasn't one person in my life that said, 'Yeah, you really seem great. You sound fine here.'" Not even his children. "When an eight year-old can realize that something's really wrong..."

Arriving on Capitol Hill for his swearing in felt a chore, but he had no choice. Even the excitement of a new job didn't wake him up. "My depression was in full force," he says, and he was starting to accept that he could not keep living that way.

'One Chance to Address This'

"The conversation I had with my team and my family is that I've got to do something or it could end in the most awful way," Fetterman says, remembering his decision to admit himself to the hospital. Asked if he's referring to self-harm, he says: "I realized that that could be an option. I wasn't thinking about self-harm, but I was firmly indifferent to living."

"There wasn't one single person in my life that was letting me know, 'John, you're doing all right.' And at that point I realized that there's no good possible outcome. And if I would harm myself, the damage would really be on my family," he says. "I decided that I had one chance to address this."

It's rare for a politician to discuss their mental health in the present tense, especially a newly elected U.S. senator whose campaign was already overshadowed by health concerns. But at the point that Fetterman was finally ready to seek treatment — after a lifetime of denying it — his family and team mobilized behind him, ready to set an example for just how far transparency can go.

On Feb. 16, Fetterman stunned the nation when a statement from his spokesperson announced that the senator had voluntarily chosen inpatient treatment for clinical depression, a condition that the world was learning he had in live time with some of his loved ones.

"I took a sigh of relief," Gisele says of the moment he checked himself in. "I was really happy."

She continues: "I think we always read in the news about when someone has done something terrible and tragic, and I would love to read more stories about someone saying, 'Hey, I just checked myself in to get help,' instead of the opposite."

He checked in on his oldest son's 14th birthday, making the emotional decision to forgo a scheduled birthday dinner knowing that it would inflict less pain on him in the long run than the alternative of a father suffering.

Fetterman spent more than six weeks in the neuropsychiatry unit, undergoing daily talk therapy, testing out different medications, exercising and learning to understand what was happening in his brain so that he could better withstand his feelings. He also finally read one of the books on depression that Gisele had been recommending.

Fetterman received daily visits from his chief of staff to discuss legislation, and additional visits from colleagues and relatives. Gisele traveled to Maryland once a week to see him.

"One of the visits, all of the kids came," he says — Karl, 14, Grace, 11, and August, 9. "And at that point, I was a little nervous. Am I okay? Am I still dad? Because I was wondering how they see me differently."

The kids, unprompted, found a pile of Post-It notes in his room and used them all up, writing encouraging notes that said things like, Happy you are getting happier, and I am so proud of you, and You will get better, and You are any dad I could ask for. They plastered them on the wall across from his bed.

"I got so emotional," he recalls, because the notes reassured him that they wanted him to be right where he was. I'm still okay, I'm still your dad, he thought. He was already feeling changed, and now he had been given permission to take whatever time he needed to complete the transformation.

For more from Sen. John Fetterman's emotional sit-down with PEOPLE, subscribe now to the magazine or pick up this week's issue, on newsstands Friday.

A New Feeling

"One of the happiest days of my life was when [my doctor] said to me in one of the sessions, 'I believe that your depression is in remission,'" Fetterman says. "At that moment, I thought there was a chance I was going to be able to be fully back with my family, that I was going to be back to being a senator and serve the people of Pennsylvania and my constituents. I mean ... that really, that was such a turn."

He says he decided to leave Walter Reed on March 31 when he felt, for the first time, like life was a joyful thing, not just "back to bearable" like it had been before.

"When I first checked in, I never thought I would be where I'm at here," he says. "To be joyous and to be feeling free of depression ... and to be free of pain, man, it's..." Fetterman struggles to find the words to complete his thought, so Gisele jumps in: "It's a first."

Now, the once-skeptical senator is on a mission to get others to address their feelings, even if they haven't reached a breaking point yet.

"I don't care if you're a liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, we all can be depressed — and we all can get made healthier," he says. "Go to the doctor or whoever you're able to. Address your depression. I was skeptical it would make anything better, but it did. It works. And I'm so grateful."

If you or someone you know needs mental health help, text "STRENGTH" to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.