Also timed with the book’s release was a brief from the Kennedy Forum, the organization Patrick started past year that aims to recast the infrastructure around behavioral healthcare.
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But now, in a statement to PEOPLE, Joan has distanced herself from the project by saying that she has not assisted Patrick in the project in anyway.
In recounting his own struggles, the former Rhode Island congressman asserts that both addiction and mental illness run in the Kennedy family. She said she has no information whether Patrick was writing the book and did not get its advance copy.
Ted Jr. said Sunday he was heartbroken that Patrick had written what he called “an inaccurate and unfair portrayal” of their family and said the narrative was “misleading and hurtful”. He writes about his mother Joan Kennedy’s alcoholism and says his father was an alcoholic who drank to deal with post-traumatic stress caused by the assassinations of his brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Patrick says other unnamed family members have been supportive.
Kennedy said these are wrongly seen as “personal issues” not as “medical issues”, and if he wrote about his family’s battles with cancer, no one would be upset.
Ted Kennedy Jr., despite disagreeing with how his brother weighed in on their family, expressed admiration for his ability to share about the challenges he himself had faced, while also pointing out the need for ongoing conversations about mental illness and death. He last spoke to his mother Friday.
The book will undoubtedly draw attention because of its Kennedy-family marketability, however, Patrick’s intent is to leverage that appeal to further his advocacy for mental health and addiction policy change.
“I’m trying to take a deep breath”, he said.
“My brother’s memories of family occasions and especially our parents are very not the same as my own”, he wrote, although he failed to give details. “We’ve been through a lot more hard things than this”. He suggests his aunt Rosemary Kennedy could have been treated for mental illness rather than receiving a lobotomy ordered by family patriarch Joseph Kennedy.
Asked if it was hard to see members of his family publicly at odds, the Massachusetts congressman replied, “It happens”.
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The elder Kennedy says his dad and he discussed just once about his 1969 vehicle accident that killed the passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne of his dad.
