Scott Morrison opens up about anxiety battle during time as Prime Minister
Scott Morrison has revealed he sometimes struggled to get out of bed during his premiership due to debilitating anxiety.
The former prime minister revealed that the pressure of the top job made him so scared he had to be put on medication.
The 55-year-old first shared his mental health struggles in his new book Plans for Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness.
He said he could not pinpoint a single moment in his role as prime minister that caused the fear, but added that many factors were at play.
‘It was a very stressful period and the combination of the weight of the issues, the length of the hours we were working, the physical demands that that brought, and to be honest, things in China were just so, so nothing more disturbing than the pandemic,” he shared The Australian.
Scott Morrison has revealed he sometimes struggled to get out of bed during his premiership due to his debilitating anxiety
Mr Morrison said the Covid pandemic and trade tariffs imposed by China on Australian products such as wine and barley had only increased fears.
Tensions with China had risen as Morrison called for an independent investigation into the origins of Covid.
He said most of his time at The Lodge was “debilitating and painful,” and that without anxiety medication he would have fallen into a deep depression.
“My doctor was amazed that I had lasted so long before seeking help,” he said in his book.
‘Without this help, severe depression would have developed. What hit me was the combination of sheer physical exhaustion with the ruthless and callous brutality of the politics and media attacks.’
The former prime minister revealed that the pressure of the top job made him so scared he had to be put on medication
Mr Morrison said that while that was all part of the job of being a public figure, “politicians are not made of stone”.
‘You’re afraid of 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,” he wrote.
The former prime minister tried to focus on other hobbies to quell his fears, such as swimming and cooking, but the mental pain was too great to bear without medication.
Unlike many other memoirs written by politicians, Morrison says his book focuses more on how his religious faith has guided him throughout his life.
Morrison served as Australia’s 30th Prime Minister from 2018 to 2022 before losing to Anthony Albanese in the 2022 election.
He retired from politics in February this year and later became a strategic advisor to DYNE Maritime, an Australian-founded, US-based venture capital firm that invests in technologies related to the AUKUS pact.
He is also vice chairman of American Global Strategies, which was co-founded and chaired by Robert O’Brien, who served as national security advisor to US President Donald Trump from 2019 to 2021.
Mr Morrison is seen with his wife Jenny and daughters Lily and Abbey