Democrat Adam Smith: I struggled with mental health for years trends now
After a brutal six years that left him at times in a state of 'near immobility' and brought him into the offices of over 100 doctors, longtime Rep. Adam Smith is coming clean with the struggles he once thought would cost him his job.
'I went to great lengths to try to make sure the only a tiny little group of people knew about this. Part of it was because if people knew, I thought I'd be out of a job. I really did,' the congressman said in an interview with DailyMail.com.
Smith cited the attacks lobbed at Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., when he checked himself into a hospital for depression for six weeks of in-patient treatment.
'I salute Senator Fetterman for doing that and having a public conversation because, you know, if you break your ankle on a skiing accident, nobody says 'oh, you should resign,' okay? I think we need to start viewing the mind and much the same way we view the body.'
Rep. Adam Smith is coming clean with the struggles he once thought would cost him his job in his new book
Smith said the hardest and most important part about struggling mentally and physically was making sure he still showed up for his kids
The Seattle-area Democrat is the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee and acts as a go-between for the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the centrist, problem-solving New Democrats.
And now with his new book, he hopes to eliminate the 'stigma' of mental health issues and highlight how heavily they play into the social discord of today, and advocate for what worked for him: a blend of psychotherapy and taking an active role in his own treatment after a series of pill-pushing doctors failed to get to the root causes of what ailed him.
At 26, Smith was elected the youngest state senator in the nation and became a U.S. House member five years later at 31. He's since been reelected 11 times.
'I was obsessed with succeeding in life,' he writes in his forthcoming memoir, Lost and Broken, obtained by DailyMail.com.
But he now admits that crippling anxiety and chronic pain accompanied by three hip surgeries threatened to derail that success.
Sen. John Fetterman, garnered attacks when he checked himself into the hospital for depression for almost two months
'I am so happy to be home. I'm excited to be the father and husband I want to be, and the senator Pennsylvania deserves.Pennsylvanians have always had my back, and I will always have theirs,' Fetterman said upon leaving hospital
The congressman said he'd always tried to be a mental health advocate professionally but it wasn't until decades into his career that he admitted he struggled with it personally.
In March of 2005 Adams recalled an early bout with anxiety. 'My heart pounded and I literally felt like I was in mortal danger,' he wrote. 'The fear seemed focused on death.'
The battles within his mind, he said, always seemed to begin in March - the month he lost his father at age 19.
Smith's anxiety took 'a turn for the worst in 2013' and the physical pain became ever-present 2014.
Between 2013 and 2018, in between raising two kids and traversing the country between Washington State and Washington, D.C. for a career in Congress, he
