Following Senator John Fetterman checking himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center last week for depression, a senior aide has revealed that the congressional freshman, who suffered a stroke while out of the campaign trail, would remain hospitalized for a length of time.
A senior aide to Fetterman told the Wall Street Journal that the senator would remain hospitalized as doctors try out a range of medications and dosages to test their efficacy.
While hospitalized, Fetterman will undergo talk therapy, speaking with a professional therapist about his experiences. The aide said that the hospital stay could rage from weeks to more than a month, but added that the stay would likely last less than two months.
The hospitalization comes as the second in recent weeks, with Fetterman being formally sworn in in January.
On February 8, Fetterman was hospitalized after he was reportedly feeling disoriented. The aide said that Fetterman was brought to George Washington University Hospital in DC for malnourishment and dehydration, problems that have re-emerged in the last week.
“It is a chicken and egg situation where when you are in the throes of clinical depression, it is very hard to apply self care,” the aide said.
“There’s a lot of absorbed negative experiences from [the campaign] that are probably worth unpacking in a therapeutic environment,” the aide said. “There’s a medication aspect to this, but there’s also a therapeutic aspect to this.”
