Scott Morrison medicated for anxiety while prime minister
Scott Morrison says he tried other methods to deal with his ‘debilitating’ anxiety and depression before turning to medication while PM.
Scott Morrison has revealed that he faced mental health challenges during his prime ministership, suffering from anxiety that became so acute he received medication for it.
Mr Morrison says that without the medication he would have fallen into a serious depression and that his anxiety during much of his time in The Lodge was “debilitating and agonising”.
“I think it just sort of built up,” he told The Australian of the anxiety that began to overwhelm him as the pressures of the job grew.
“I couldn’t put my finger on a particular time. It was a very stressful period and the combination of the weight of issues, the length of hours that we were working, the physical demands that brought and to be honest the stuff around China was as, if not more, distressing than the pandemic. You’re flesh and blood and so it would start to impact you.”
With each new challenge, from the Covid pandemic to the showdowns with China, and with each new controversy and subsequent wave of media attacks, Mr Morrison said the waves of anxiety he felt became more acute.
Eventually he sought help from his doctor in Canberra who prescribed him medication to help him deal with it. “My doctor was amazed I had lasted as long as I had before seeking help,” Morrison writes as he reveals for the first time his mental health challenges in his new book Plans for Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness.
“Without this help, serious depression would have manifested. What impacted me was the combination of pure physical exhaustion with the unrelenting and callous brutality of politics and media attacks,” he writes.
“As a politician I know this goes with the territory. That’s not a complaint or even an accusation. It’s just reality. Politicians are not made of stone, yet they’re often treated as though they are, including by each other.”
Mr Morrison, who was prime minister from 2018 to 2022, says his anxiety was “debilitating and agonising”.
“You dread the future and you can’t get out of bed. It can shut you down mentally and physically. It robs you of your joy and can damage relationships. I know this from personal experience.’
“You can’t deal with it by telling yourself to, as we say in Australia, take a teaspoon of cement and harden up.”
The revelation is one of many in Mr Morrison’s book, which is not a traditional political memoir, but rather an unusual blend of how his own faith as a Christian intersected with his time as prime minister. In the book, Mr Morrison speaks of how his faith sustained him and guided him on issues including the Covid pandemic, the creation of the AUKUS nuclear submarine pact and the threat posed by China.
He also discusses how faith guided his judgment during the leadership showdowns of August 2018, which led to Mr Morrison taking over from Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister.
“Most politicians write books about what they’ve done; this story is about what I believe God has done for me,” he says.
Mr Morrison believes the mental health of leaders under enormous pressure is not something that should be taken for granted.
“We’re all just people you know,” he writes. “There are no superhuman qualities or superpowers anyone possesses. It’s right to expect a lot of our leaders, don’t get me wrong, but we also have to be conscious that they have to function.”
Mr Morrison says he tried other methods to deal with his anxiety, including swimming and cooking, but these were not enough to ward off his condition without medical help.
In the book Mr Morrison explores his own quest to avoid the bitterness and revenge-seeking behaviour that has afflicted so many ex-prime ministers. He says he is trying to forgive his political enemies although he admits this is still a work in progress. “I decided I would be someone who would just move on with my life and there were many other things in my life (because) my life wasn’t completely consumed by politics or the role,” he says. “I never saw the role (of prime minister) as defining who I was as a human being or an individual.”
Mr Morrison says he does not plan to write a traditional political memoir. “It’s just not how I’m wired,” he says.
He says he is much more interested in exploring questions of faith than raking over the legacy of his time in The Lodge.
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