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Lina Hidalgo, a rising star in the Democratic Party and the top lawmaker in Harris County, Texas’ most populous county, announced last summer that she had checked into a residential mental health clinic for severe depression. It surprised many people.
She has remained private for years, even as she presided over Houston’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and aggressively came forward to help the county’s residents cope with flooding and a devastating winter freeze. I’ve been struggling with it.
And in the midst of a fierce re-election battle in 2022, her mental health deteriorated. Her aides knew something was wrong – there were absences from campaign events and lack of staff – but few realized how dire the situation had become.
“I remember feeling really suicidal and telling my then-boyfriend David and my therapist, ‘I have to do something,'” Hidalgo said.
Since returning from nearly two months of treatment at the clinic, Hidalgo has spoken openly and frequently about her mental health, and her struggles have become a central part of her political identity.
In a lengthy interview with The New York Times, she spoke candidly about her depression, her decision to seek treatment, and the trauma of childhood sexual abuse, which she has rarely talked about.
“The more we talk about this, the more we help someone else,” she says.
Hidalgo, 32, joins a growing list of politicians, most of them Democrats, who have chosen to be public about their mental health. Ms. Hidalgo herself has benefited from such openness, she said, drawing inspiration from Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who told Ms. Hidalgo months before she sought such care. She announced that she was undergoing inpatient treatment for depression.
However, this approach still carries political risks. Political consultants still point to Sen. Thomas Eagleton, Democrat of Missouri. His history of mental health treatment ended his chances as a vice presidential candidate in 1972. The number of politicians actively discussing mental health treatment is growing but remains small.
“They feel that once they get that scarlet letter, people will always look at them sideways,” says former Congressman Patrick Kennedy. United States Capitol Building. Since then, he has become an outspoken advocate for mental health treatment. “In the modern world of work, all of this is still being negotiated,” Kennedy said.
Rep. Richie Torres, D-Bronx, has spoken candidly about his mental health as a member of Congress. But early in his career as a local politician in New York City, he was more secretive about the fact that he had been hospitalized for depression. Still, he recalled that during his first campaign for City Council, rumors about his mental health spread.
After that experience, “I decided to be open and honest about it,” he said. “There is value in telling your own story.”
Mr. Hidalgo was born in Colombia and lived in Peru and Mexico during his childhood. Her family moved to the Houston area when she was in high school. She recalled the first time she told her mother that she had been sexually assaulted by her tennis coach in Mexico when she was 11 years old, when she was a student at Stanford University. Hidalgo said she sometimes looked for people who knew her as a child to help her understand what happened to her. But most of the time she kept it a secret.
“It seemed like a classic thing where you’re too embarrassed to even talk about it,” she said.
She said she did not seek residential treatment until after her re-election bid, which she won by about 18,000 votes. During her campaign, some of her staff debated whether she should take her leave, according to several people who have worked with her, but she is not sure how she feels about her re-election prospects. He was worried about the impact it would have.
“For Lina, being a young Latina in a blue city in a red state meant she was already a target even before she announced her diagnosis,” said Lina, a longtime Harris County Democratic Party committee member and ally of Hidalgo. says Rodney Ellis. . “Admitting that you have a mental health problem is not the secret to a successful campaign.”
Still, said Jeronimo Cortina, a political science professor at the University of Houston, the political impact of such disclosures depends on the kind of voters candidates are trying to attract. “It may be a liability, but it may be limited to older voters who are used to thinking of mental health as not part of their health,” Cortina said.
Hidalgo rose to prominence almost overnight in 2018, when the progressive first-time elected official and 27-year-old immigrant defeated a popular Republican for the county judge’s job, shocking Harris County conservatives. . He is the equivalent of a county chief executive in Texas.
Suddenly, she was presiding over the county’s five-member commission court and serving as emergency manager for the nation’s third-most populous county, with 4.7 million residents. She quickly became such a well-known face in Houston that she sometimes had to wear a purple wig and glasses to anonymously visit the city’s museums.
In his first term, Gov. Greg Abbott dealt with catastrophic events such as floods, massive chemical fires, and the coronavirus pandemic, and over mask mandates and other public health restrictions he sought to impose. clashed with Republican state leaders, including Republican donors in Houston poured money into supporting his 2022 opponent.
She first saw a psychiatrist a few months before the 2022 election. She was diagnosed with anxiety, she was prescribed some medication, and they thought she could live with this. “But I cried the whole time,” she said. She tried to never be alone and never tried to drive her car by herself because she was worried about what she would do.
Although she won her race for re-election, her depression continued. She vacationed in Thailand and received attention in Vogue magazine, but nothing seemed to help her.
In the process, there was a public uproar that raised questions about her performance. She swore in one committee courtroom while discussing District Attorney Kim Ogg, a Democrat who has often clashed with Hidalgo.
(Three of Hidalgo’s former aides were indicted by Ogg’s office and are accused of providing inside information to contractors before the county awarded them an $11 million coronavirus contract.) (The lawyer denies any wrongdoing.)
Shortly before Hidalgo finally received treatment, he considered resigning. “I’m so glad I didn’t do that, because it wouldn’t have changed anything,” she said in an interview.
After she broke down in tears during her appointment, her primary care physician connected her with a new psychiatrist, who “quickly realized I was in real danger” and recommended the Lindner Center of Hope in Ohio. He said he gave it to me. She said asking for help saved her life.
She acknowledged that not everyone could endure the seven weeks of residential treatment she received, which she said totaled about $88,000. She said her boyfriend, civil rights and personal injury attorney David James, paid most of her bill. The couple got engaged in January.
When Ms. Hidalgo decided to undergo treatment last year, she first told her advisers and political confidants. Ellis presided over the county meeting in her absence and voted to approve the county’s annual budget. Then she told everyone.
“It is important to me personally and professionally that we address this issue quickly,” she said in a public statement last summer.
Her decision was praised by local Democrats. At the same time, as her absence dragged on, some Republicans, including her former opponent, demanded that she “come back or resign.” Others began trying to remove her from her public office.
Now that she has returned to work after completing treatment, she faces new political obstacles and her control on the committee, even though Democrats hold four of the committee’s five seats. shows that it is weakening. Recently, she strongly opposed a pay raise for county employees, which was defeated by a 4-1 vote.
Newly elected Houston Mayor John Whitmire, a Democrat with strong Republican support in the officially nonpartisan mayoral race, has not yet met with Hidalgo. The two leaders held separate press conferences on emergency measures during the recent severe winter weather.
At last month’s Houston Marathon, she tried to greet Mr. Whitmire with a hug. But when she approached him, he firmly held out her arm to stop her and shook her hand instead, she said. “She couldn’t even reach her hand and give him a hug,” she said, adding that he then walked away from her.
(Mayor spokeswoman Mary Benton said Whitmire “prefers a friendly handshake” over a hug while at work, adding that he “was there to congratulate all the runners” rather than walk away.) Ta.)
Hidalgo said she’s trying to keep that in mind. She keeps notes of what she learns during her treatment, which she constantly looks up on her phone and continues to participate in video group therapy.
“This week’s lesson was about bitterness,” she said. “This is very useful in a political context, right?”
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