Legendary journalist, news veteran and 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace didn’t always want to talk about depression or deal with the stigma of his depression. Until, one night while appearing on The Bob Costas Show, he came to the conclusion that the people watching late-night television couldn’t sleep. And that’s a feeling Wallace could relate to.
That became the first time Wallace went public about his own battle with depression. “It lifted an extraordinary burden,” he told the Academy of Achievement. “Since that time I have talked about it fairly openly for the reason that it can be helpful for other people to say, ‘Well look, here's a guy who was at the bottom of the heap, miserable, and look, he has it back. He’s...surviving.’”
Like most people, Wallace had days when he felt down, when it took more of an effort than usual to get through the things he had to do. But he always snapped out of it he told the magazine Guideposts. His down times always managed to pass.
Until the fall of 1984, that is. At that time, Wallace first began experiencing depression symptoms while on trial in a case $120 million case along with other CBS employees and the network. The libel suit, surrounding a story on Vietnam deception, affected him greatly. “To be called ‘liar, cheat, fraud,’ et cetera, and in a libel case nothing is barred, little by little by little, I found myself getting spacey, and unable to sleep and unable to eat…” Wallace said.
His wife pushed him to see a doctor and encouraged him to acknowledge that something was wrong. But Wallace denied it, citing the pressure surrounding the trial as temporarily affecting him in a way that he could overcome on his own when it was over. But his wife insisted he see a doctor and, when he did, he was told that nothing was wrong, that he was tough and that he didn’t need help. The doctor even went so far as to warn Wallace about the damage he could to his own reputation if the public got wind of his emotional difficulties.
But Wallace’s wife remained concerned. She knew her husband was experiencing something more than stress or exhaustion. And indeed he was. His issues, Wallace found out, were symptoms of classic, clinical depression. “I tried to keep on working because I was ashamed of acknowledging the fact that I was depressed. You don't use that word,” he admits. Nevertheless, Wallace sought help and, after four months of treatment, was diagnosed by his psychiatrist who also offered up treatment options.
“First, he [Wallace’s doctor] prescribed an antidepressant to relieve my symptoms,” Wallace said. Then psychotherapy helped him gain insight into himself and figure out ways to cope with what was troubling him. “That's in my estimation quite important, that you do psychotherapy along with pharmacological therapy,” Wallace says. His struggle with the disease was so serious that he was hospitalized in 1984. After a couple of relapses, he found an anti-depressant that has kept him balanced.
Wallace continued his therapy sessions and went back to work but when asked what he is most proud of, his response is simple: “having survived.” “When I say ‘having survived,’ I mean it. Find your way, struggle and hanging in there, being honest with yourself and honest with others and finally, finally, learning to be kind to other people,” Wallace says.
