His father was not happy with him when Kennedy first shared his personal story during the time he was advocating for the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, he said. Edward Kennedy, openly discusses what he says are the mental illnesses and addictions of himself and his family members, and takes on what he portrays as a veil of secrecy used to hide the problems of America’s most famous political family.
Advertisement
For example, he recently told “60 Minutes” that his late father, Ted Kennedy, refused to acknowledge his alcohol addiction when Patrick and his siblings approached him about it years ago.
The memoir, “A Common Challenge”, due out Monday, focuses greatly on his relationship with his dad and the way the younger Kennedy frequently believed he let his dad down while contending with bipolar and anxiety disorders and continued trips to rehabilitation, even as a Rhode Island representative.
Also timed with the book’s release was a brief from the Kennedy Forum, the organization Patrick started previous year that aims to recast the infrastructure around behavioral healthcare.
By his telling, it turned out to be a remarkable encounter Family members are in the practice of giving each other autographed pictures when he was only a baby, he got one from his dad.
Patrick Kennedy writes candidly about his struggles.
In an interview with The Boston Globe, he insisted, “I’m writing very truthfully”. His father, he says, suffered post-traumatic stress disorder from the family’s storied tragedies, including the assassinations of two of his brothers, and “self-medicated” his disease.
While his brother, Ted Kennedy Jr., acknowledged Kennedy’s work in bringing mental health into the national conversation, he said in a statement: “I am heartbroken that Patrick has chosen to write what is an inaccurate and unfair portrayal of our family”.
“My brother’s recollections of family events and particularly our parents are quite different from my own”, he wrote, although he did not give specifics. “We had lived in turmoil our whole lives”, he writes.
The ideas all sound pretty straightforward, but what is yet to be determined is whether Patrick-no longer a politician-can drive an agenda like that exclusively from his advocacy position. At that time, various substances were being abused by Patrick Kennedy.
Advertisement
He writes that he felt “that I had been deemed not worthy to pay tribute to him because I had an illness that could be embarrassing or inconvenient”, he wrote. Feeling vindicated, the eulogy was presented by Kennedy, having a shaky voice, .
