Diane Patrick 'incredibly strong' after bout with depression

March 11, 2008 10:42 AM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

(AP Photo/Bizuayehu Tesfaye)

Diane Patrick spoke today at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce's Women's Network Breakfast about how her husband's gubernatorial campaign left her exhausted, demoralized, and diminished.

By Matt Viser, Globe Staff

Diane Patrick said this morning that she feels "so incredibly strong" after a tumultuous year in the public eye during which she was treated for depression.

"I was demoralized, I was diminished, I was exhausted," Patrick, the wife of Governor Deval Patrick, told about 300 women gathered in a hotel ballroom for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce's Women's Network. "It just all came crashing down."

Patrick, who has called herself "a deeply private person," quietly captivated a room full of the most powerful women in Boston in her most extensive remarks since last March, when the governor’s office announced she was being treated for depression and exhaustion.

The news that she was seeking medical treatment just two months after her husband took office appeared on the front page of The Boston Globe. Diane Patrick said she avoided reading the article until last night.

“There I was, splat, falling down, crashing right in front of everybody, right in the public eye,” she said this morning during a 30-minute address.

Schoolchildren sent poems and pictures. One woman knitted a prayer shawl, and thousands of others wrote letters of support.

She took seven weeks off, and also stopped her work as a partner in the labor and employment department of Ropes & Gray, a prominent downtown law firm.

She has since returned to the practice, and said she has become less agitated over public criticism of her husband.

“I stand here today, a year later,” Patrick said. “And I feel so incredibly strong.”