Michelle Obama reveals she has 'low-grade depression' due to coronavirus and Trump administration
Former First Lady Michelle Obama has revealed she has "low-grade depression" from coronavirus quarantine, racial strife in the United States and the "hypocrisy" of the Trump administration.
Mrs Obama made the remarks in the latest episode of "The Michelle Obama Podcast" released on Spotify on Wednesday.
"I'm waking up in the middle of the night because I'm worrying about something or there's a heaviness," the 56-year-old former First Lady said.
"I try to make sure I get a workout in, although there have been periods throughout this quarantine where I just have felt too low."
Mrs Obama said she had been going through "those emotional highs and lows that I think everybody feels, where you just don't feel yourself".
"These are not, they are not fulfilling times, spiritually," she said.
"I know that I am dealing with some form of low-grade depression.
"Not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife, and just seeing this administration, watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out, is dispiriting."
Mrs Obama and husband Barack Obama, America's first black president, took up residence in Washington after he left the White House in January 2017.
She said it was "exhausting" to be "waking up to yet another story of a black man or a black person somehow being dehumanised, or hurt, or killed, or falsely accused of something".
"And it has led to a weight that I haven't felt in my life, in a while," she said.
Mrs Obama said it was important to remember that "we've been through tough times in this nation" before.
"We are in a unique moment in history," she said. "We are living through something that no one in our lifetimes has lived through."
