Finance Minister Katy Gallagher reveals taking antidepressants after personal tragedy
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher says she took antidepressants and had “serious psychiatric interventions” after the death of her fiance while she was pregnant in the 1990s.
Speaking on former prime minister Julia Gillard’s A Podcast of One’s Own, Gallagher is the first politician currently in office to talk about taking medication for her mental health after Scott Morrison revealed he took antidepressants while he was prime minister in 2021.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher has opened up about taking antidepressants.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
In 1997, a then 27-year-old Gallagher was pregnant with her first child when her fiance, Brett Seaman, was killed while riding his bike when an unlicensed woman in her 80s hit him while driving her car at over 100km/h.
Gallagher told Gillard on the podcast, which was published on Thursday, that the transition was life-changing and the period of piecing her life back together was traumatic.
“[I] had in the end, you know, some pretty serious psychiatric interventions. I really did go into the bottom of the bottom,” she said.
Gallagher said it took a doctor telling her “you’re going to have a baby in six weeks, and you’re not going to be able to care for it” for her to get “back together”.
“I thought, ‘I can’t now lose the baby’. And so that, that moment just that one line, that clarity. I thought right, this is for real now. I’ve got to get myself back together,” she said.
“I started taking antidepressants, which … pulled me out of the kind of hole I was in, and by the time Abby [Gallagher’s daughter] was born, there was no one who was going to take that baby from me.”
Gallagher talking about her mental health struggles comes after Morrison confirmed to this masthead and wrote in his new book, Plans for Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness, that he took antidepressants in 2021.
Morrison said he dealt with waves of acute anxiety during a time when he felt “the pile-on really got under way”.
In addition to revealing her mental health struggles, Gallagher also told Gillard after the loss of Seaman that members of the Labor Party, of which Seaman was a member, created a sense of family and former premier of Victoria Joan Kirner motivated her to run for the ACT Legislative Assembly in 2001.
“I was like, ‘I’ve accidentally been elected’, and we formed government at that time as well, so yeah,” she said.
“It wasn’t meant to be. I was told it wouldn’t happen, and then when it did happen, it was a shock to everybody including the new chief minister who I’d never even met, John Stanhope.”
If you or someone you know is in need of support contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue.
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