In Braddock, Pa., prayers and empathy as Fetterman seeks help for depression

BRADDOCK, Pa. — Teri Gilmore, who suffered two concussions several years ago, choked back tears as she described the lingering effects of those accidents: The frustration of having mental limitations. The isolation of carrying an invisible injury. The heartbreak of longing for a former version of yourself.

Her experience, she says, gives her some insight into what a friend, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), is going through.

In the days since the senator shared that he was seeking inpatient treatment for clinical depression, he has received overwhelming compassion from colleagues and strangers. And here, in this crumbling, hardscrabble town that Fetterman has called home for more than two decades, where he served as mayor and philanthropist and has raised his three children, people feel an even deeper connection to his challenges.

“He’s thinking he failed himself, his family. The emotional toll of that. He’s embarrassed. Do I look weak? Is everything I built going to collapse? Can I fulfill what people expect of me?” Gilmore said, sitting in her living room a few days after Fetterman checked himself into the hospital for psychiatric care. “That’s a heavy burden when you’re trying to heal yourself.”

Fetterman, 53, survived a near-fatal stroke in May just before he won the Democratic nomination in one of the most competitive Senate races in the country. He pushed himself to get back on the campaign trail less than two months later. At rallies, he sometimes stumbled over his words. An auditory processing disorder brought on by the stroke limited his ability to converse with voters.

Gilmore has not spoken to Fetterman since his stroke, though she’s attended a few campaign events, including his election night victory party, and has sent motivating texts to his wife, Gisele. Still, Gilmore said, she can imagine the strain he’s been under because she too has put pressure on herself after her brain injuries to finish her master’s degree and take up the causes she once championed.

An ordained minister, Gilmore, 59, dedicated most of her life to child development work and befriended Fetterman when he was mayor of this once-bustling steel mill town to work together on programs for local youth. In 2019, he asked her to deliver the benediction at his inauguration when he was sworn in as Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor. A campaign mailer from Fetterman’s first Senate campaign in 2016 hangs on a pink-painted wall in her home office next to a metal cross. The spot contains a collage of her name tags from seminars and speeches as well as images of the people she prays for, she said. She’s praying for Fetterman now.

Fetterman’s disclosure of his depression last week has largely been met with empathy and praise for his openness about his mental health. Fetterman’s spokesman, Joe Calvello, said Senate colleagues have showered his office with gifts. Among them, Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Ala.) sent a cookie cake. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent a fruit basket. Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who has spoken publicly about her depression, dropped off doughnuts for Fetterman’s staff.

Gisele Barreto Fetterman, the senator’s wife, on Saturday shared on social media a message she’d received from someone who went to therapy for the first time — more than a decade after being diagnosed with depression — after learning about Fetterman’s health. “But seeing that one of the toughest people I’ve ever talked to did the same thing today reassured me that I was making the right choice,” the person wrote.

Nearly 40 percent of Pennsylvania adults reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, according to February 2021 data compiled by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Of the 1.8 million adults in the state with cited mental health conditions, nearly 600,000 of them did not receive any treatment in the last year.

Fetterman checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Wednesday evening at the recommendation of Congress’s attending physician, Brian P. Monahan. Since arriving in Washington in January after a grueling campaign, Fetterman has relied on assistive talk-to-text technology to interact with colleagues and follow along during committee and floor debates. Gisele and their children are living at home in Braddock. A senior aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the senator’s health, said over the last several weeks Fetterman had become increasingly withdrawn and not himself, and had grown malnourished and dehydrated from not eating or drinking enough.

Stroke-induced depression is fairly common, and studies show about 30 percent of people who survive life-threatening events that require intensive care develop symptoms of depression.

Later Saturday evening, sitting inside Club Elegance, a bar on Braddock’s main drag where the smell of cigarette smoke hangs heavy in the air, Darnell West, 57, reflected on the parallels between his and Fetterman’s health scares.

Unlike Gilmore, West doesn’t know Fetterman personally, but he’s spoken to him in town a few times. Around the same time Fetterman suffered a stroke, West was treated for atrial fibrillation caused by elevated blood pressure that caused his body to fill with fluid. West had stopped taking his medication about a year prior.

Similarly, it was revealed after Fetterman’s stroke that he had been diagnosed years earlier with cardiomyopathy that decreased the amount of blood his heart could pump, and he had not taken the recommended medicine.

“We as men, you know, we want to be in control, right? You know what I mean? Every aspect of your life you want to be in control, and when we feel that we’re not in control, I mean, that really sets off something,” West said, between sips from a Coors Light bottle. “And so I can understand where he’s coming from.”

West also was empathetic about Fetterman’s depression, calling it “a common thing” that he faces, too.

“I think depression is dealt with by everybody on a daily basis. I mean, I deal with depression and, you know, sometimes it just, like, makes you feel down, like you don’t want to do anything,” West said.

Inside the lobby of an affordable housing unit for seniors, Deacon, 67, a lifelong Braddock resident who declined to give his last name, sat on the seat of his walker with several other residents.

“Everybody got somebody in their family with it. Mental health is rough,” Deacon said.

Deacon said Fetterman tried hard to better the community here and wondered if the stress of trying to be everything for everyone caught up with him.

“He was just trying to help everybody else; you can’t do everything for everybody,” he said. “He was trying. He did everything he could do for here.”

In Braddock, the main artery through town is mostly lined with dilapidated, vacant buildings with peeling paint and faded signage. But it’s also dotted with Fetterman’s influences, mostly projects he supported with a nonprofit he created to fund his vision for revitalizing the debilitated town. Fetterman, who came from an affluent family, arrived in Braddock fresh out of Harvard graduate school to work with low-income, at-risk youth. He decided to stay and try to rebuild the town, with mixed results.

One of the lasting businesses that emerged under Fetterman’s leadership is a craft brewery called Brew Gentleman, which sits next to a church and a block from the Free Store — Gisele’s brainchild, where anyone can shop for clothes, food, homewares and other goods at no cost.

Joel Houkom, 60, of Philadelphia, was sipping a coffee stout with his friend of 30 years, John Kachur, 59, from the nearby town of Etna, who was drinking the flagship General Braddock’s IPA. They’d come to Braddock to sample the beer. Both were Fetterman supporters who said they were rooting for him to get better and were glad he was talking openly about his mental health, a once-taboo topic.

“Well, if there’s one thing Fetterman has done,” Kachur said, “it’s break stigmas.”

Fetterman is known as much for his politics as he is for his appearance. He’s stands at 6 feet 8 inches tall, is bald with a goatee, and has tattoos on his arms, including one on his left arm that reads “15104,” Braddock’s Zip code.

“Oh, they’re so strong, they’re so manly, they’re on the TV, they must be a strong person,” Kachur said, referring to Fetterman’s public persona. “It could happen to anybody.”