Senator John Fetterman could remain hospitalised for more than a month to treat ‘severe’ depression

Pennsylvania senator checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Wednesday

Pennsylvania’s new senator John Fetterman may remain hospitalised for weeks after checking himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to receive treatment for “severe” clinical depression.

Mr Fetterman has experienced periods of depression throughout his life, his office said in a statement on Thursday.

“Last night, Senator John Fetterman checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to receive treatment for clinical depression. While John has experienced depression off and on throughout his life, it only became severe in recent weeks,” his office said.

The senator “will soon be back to himself”, the statement concluded.

A senior aide to Mr Fetterman told the Wall Street Journal on Friday that his hospital stay could extend to more than a month as doctors test out new medications and dosages.

The aide said Mr Fetterman will also undergo talk therapy.

“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.”

The aide added that Mr Fetterman has experienced bouts of malnourishment and dehydration for the past couple weeks.

“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,” they said.

Mr Fetterman suffered a stroke last year and was voluntarily hospitalised after feeling lightheaded earlier this month.

According to his statement, this most recent hospitalisation came at the recommendation of the US Congress’ attending physician earlier this week.

His victory in the Pennsylvania Senate race enraged Republicans who had sought to make his mental capacities a campaign issue in the waning days of the race. Coverage of accessibility options that Mr Fetterman has taken advantage of upon assuming his office has only reignited the criticism of his ability to legislate on the right, while disability advocates have said that the tone and tenor of the coverage itself reveals an ableist bias in the Washington press.

Mr Fetterman’s opponent in the 2022 midterms was Dr Mehmet Oz, a celebrity TV doctor whose campaign was endorsed during the primary by Donald Trump. Dr Oz muddled through a lackluster campaign trail performance throughout the summer, making increasingly awkward and ugly attacks through spokespersons aimed at his opponent’s mental faculties, which failed to resonate with voters.

His victory, alongside that of incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia, was credited with delivering Democrats an expanded majority in the US Senate this term; Republicans had initially gone in to November’s midterms hoping to capture both chambers of the Congress and instead only saw their party attain a single-digit majority in the lower House.