Her depression was crippling. Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter saved her, she says.
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The mornings were some of the worst times for Anne Mahoney Robbins, when her depression became so crippling that she wondered whether she could summon the strength to get out of bed.
It was the 1970s, and Robbins had not told many people how she had struggled with depression for more than a decade. She feared the stigma of mental illness would make her undesirable to employers and unacceptable to family and friends. One of the people Robbins did tell, however, was not turned off by her depression - and that person happened to be the first lady.
So when the phone would ring at her Maryland home in the morning, Robbins picked up and was told it was a call from the White House. Rosalynn Carter was on the line.
"She'd say, 'Are you out of bed? Have you taken your shower?'" Robbins, now 81, recounted in an interview. "She said, 'Anne, you're Irish. The Irish are tough. Are you tough? And are you out of bed?'"
Carter would press her to get going, repeating "I need you to take a shower," until Robbins complied.
Robbins was a member of the Carter administration's Mental Health Commission, and her husband, Dave, now 88, was a White House aide. Until now, she has not publicly talked about her depression or the role the first lady and president played in helping her. But after former president Jimmy Carter said he was spending his final days in hospice care and Rosalynn Carter was recently diagnosed with dementia, Robbins said, she felt it was time to open up about the way the couple was there for her when she was struggling.
"If it weren't for Jimmy and Rosalynn, honest to God, I don't know what would have happened to me," Robbins said.
Described by presidential historian Michael Beschloss as "a magnificent champion for mental health in America," Rosalynn Carter has used her activism over a half-century to help people with mental illness "have access to mental health care, insurance payments for it, and the freedom to live a life of dignity and self-worth," according to the Carter Center.
Shortly after her husband entered the White House in 1977, Rosalynn Carter told the New York Times that she wanted "every person who needs mental health care to be able to receive it close to his home, and to remove the stigma from mental health care so people will be free to talk about it and seek help."
"It's been taboo for so long to admit you had a mental health problem," she continued.
Robbins admitted she didn't think the Carters would want to stay connected to her and Dave once they found out about her depression. The families had grown close after Dave's work with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare often took him to Georgia when Jimmy Carter was governor, she said.
Robbins remembered getting a call one day in 1974 at their home in Chevy Chase, Md.: "Hi, this is Jimmy Carter. I want you and your husband to come down and spend the weekend with us at the governor's mansion."
A friendship was blossoming among the four, with Rosalynn Carter writing thank-you notes to Robbins after their visits to Georgia. But Robbins worried about the secret she was keeping from many of those closest to her, including the Carters.
Robbins, who grew up in an Irish Catholic clan of Pennsylvania Democrats, said she became depressed around 1963 after graduating from Pennsylvania State University. Her family did not have a history of depression.
"I was all alone," she said.
That same year, President John F. Kennedy, the man who had once come to her home and took her to a deli down the street, was assassinated in Dallas.
She said she dealt with her depression with years of therapy but never talked about it. Back then, lots of people dismissed psychiatry and psychology as quack sciences.
The 1975 Academy Award-winning film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" featured a main character (played by Jack Nicholson) who blamed therapy "for being repressive, coercive and more damaging than helpful to patients," a 2016 study pointed out.
"I love Jack Nicholson as an actor, but the movie did not have a good effect on me," Robbins said.
In interviews for positions in politics, Robbins said she was advised by those who knew not to mention her mental health because it would probably kill her chances of getting a job. She was always nervous and anxious that others would find out about her depression, Robbins said. She felt trapped.
"If you had depression the way I did, people would say stuff like, 'Oh God, don't get involved with her,'" she said.
Robbins had been campaigning for Jimmy Carter in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., first in the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania and then in the 1976 presidential election. He had become her son's godfather in 1975, even though he wasn't Catholic.
When Carter defeated President Gerald Ford, Robbins was part ecstatic and part crushed. She wondered whether she and her husband would lose contact with their dear friends.
"I started to tell [Rosalynn] - I was crying - I told her, 'You're going to be first lady, and I'm not going to come with you because I have depression,'" Robbins said. "And she told me, 'Don't be ridiculous.'"
Jimmy Carter felt the same way, Robbins said. She remembered Carter, then the president-elect, calling the house again with a different ask: "Are both you and Dave going to work in the White House?"
"I was beside myself," she said.
Soon, Robbins was invited to serve as part of the Carter administration's Presidential Commission on Mental Health, which would recommend policies to address deficiencies in the mental health system. Rosalynn Carter, who was the honorary chair of the commission, worked for more than a year to deliver a report to the president outlining how "mental health is an integral part of overall health as well as a basic human right," according to the Carter Center.
During this time, the first lady would give Robbins pep talks about how she was loved. The relationship and years of therapy eventually allowed her to recover from her depression, Robbins said.
"Rosalynn kept saying to me, 'You have to care about yourself. People love you, and you can't get stuck in this terrible thing that you're in,'" Robbins remembered.
At an assisted-living facility in Rockville where she and her husband now live, Robbins points to the walls in their room covered in framed photos and other signed mementos capturing the decades of friendship with the Carters.
Robbins cried upon hearing about her friends' health taking a turn in recent months and weeks. But she holds on to the good times, flipping through the newspaper clippings, books and letters from the first family, who "gave me a wonderful life" when she didn't think it was possible.
"You felt your life was over if you had depression," Robbins said, "but the Carters saved my life."
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