Michelle Obama says she has ‘low-grade depression’

Former US First Lady Michelle Obama has said she is suffering from “low-grade depression” because of the pandemic, racial injustice and the “hypocrisy” of the Trump administration.

She said managing “emotional highs and lows” required “knowing yourself” and “the things that do bring you joy”.

Mrs Obama said she has had difficulties with her exercise routine and sleep.

“I’m waking up in the middle of the night because I’m worrying about something or there’s a heaviness.”

She made the comments during the second episode of her eponymous podcast, for which she was interviewing US journalist Michele Norris.

“These are not, they are not fulfilling times, spiritually,” Mrs Obama 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.”

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She also said it is “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.

However, she said “schedule is key” to managing these feelings – and that maintaining a routine has become even more important to her in the pandemic.

For the first episode of the podcast she interviewed her husband Barack Obama, who was in office before Donald Trump.