The short tenure and long legacy of interior secretary Stanley K. Hathaway

The second half of the 20th century saw significant progress toward the destigmatization of psychiatric illness and the embrace of mental health care by the American public. Attitudes toward political leaders and candidates with psychiatric diagnoses also evolved during this period—although not at the same pace. From the 1940s through the early 1970s, such diagnoses damaged the careers of prominent officials including Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton. By the 1980s and 1990s, candidates like Tom Turnipseed and Lawton Chiles increasingly embraced candor with regard to their psychiatric diagnoses and histories, and voters often proved forgiving. A transitional event in this development was the now largely forgotten hospitalization of Gerald Ford’s Secretary of the Interior, Stanley K. Hathaway, for depression in 1975. This paper examines the Hathaway case and argues that Ford’s willingness to stand by Hathaway proved a turning point in the embrace of politicians with psychiatric illnesses by the American electorate.