Profiles in Mental Health Courage

Several years ago, Patrick J. Kennedy shared the story of his personal and family challenges with mental illness and addiction--and the nation’s--in his bestselling memoir, When Kennedy’s uncle, President John F. Kennedy, published his classic book In In this book, you’ll meet people of all ages, backgrounds, and futures, across politics and government, Hollywood and the arts, tech and business, sports and science--some recovering, some relapsing, some just barely holding on, but all sharing experiences and insights we need to better understand. You’ll also meet those trying to help them through--parents, siblings, spouses, therapists, bosses, doctors, and friends who create the extended families needed to support care and wellness. The personal stories they share with Kennedy and Fried are intimate, sometimes shocking, always revealing. And they are essential reading for caregivers, family members, policymakers, and the general public--just as they are for those who often feel alone in experiencing these challenges themselves....

Auteur

Patrick J. Kennedy is a former member of the U.S. Congress, the nation’s leading political voice on mental illness, addiction, and other brain diseases, and the New York Times bestselling coauthor of A Common Struggle. During his sixteen-year career representing Rhode Island, he fought a national battle to end medical and societal discrimination against mental illnesses, highlighted by his lead sponsorship of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008—and his brave openness about his own health challenges. Soon after his father, Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy, passed away, he left Congress to devote his career to advocacy for mental health. He has since founded The Kennedy Forum, which unites the community of mental health, and cofounded One Mind for Research, as well as other nonprofit organizations addressing these issues. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Amy, and their five children.

Stephen Fried is an award-winning journalist and New York Times*bestselling author who teaches at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Pennsylvania. He is, most recently, the author of the historical biography *Appetite for America, and the coauthor, with Congressman Patrick Kennedy, of A Common Struggle. His earlier books include the biography Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia and the investigative books Bitter Pills and The New Rabbi. A two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, Fried has written frequently for Vanity Fair, GQ, The Washington Post Magazine, Rolling Stone, Glamour, and Philadelphia Magazine. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, author Diane Ayres.

Texte du rabat

"Portrays those who have struggled with their mental health. This book offers deeply compelling stories about the bravery and resilience of those living with a variety of mental illnesses and addictions"--

Résumé
Profiles in Mental Health Courage portrays the dramatic journeys of a diverse group of Americans who have struggled with their mental health. This book offers deeply compelling stories about the bravery and resilience of those living with a variety of mental illnesses and addictions.

Several years ago, Patrick J. Kennedy shared the story of his personal and family challenges with mental illness and addiction—and the nation’s—in his bestselling memoir, A Common Struggle. Now, he and his Common Struggle coauthor, award-winning healthcare journalist Stephen Fried, have crafted this powerful new book sharing the untold stories of others—a special group who agreed to talk about their illnesses, treatments, and struggles for the first time.

When Kennedy’s uncle, President John F. Kennedy, published his classic book Profiles in Courage, he hoped to inspire “political courage” by telling the stories of brave U.S. senators who changed America. 
 
In Profiles in Mental Health Courage, former Congressman Kennedy adapts his uncle’s idea to inspire the “mental health courage” it takes for those with these conditions to treat their illnesses, and risk telling their stories to help America face its crisis in our families, our workplaces, our jails, and on our streets. The resounding silence surrounding these illnesses remains persistent, and this book takes an unflinching look at the experience of mental illness and addiction that inspires profound connection, empathy, and action.
 
In this book, you’ll meet people of all ages, backgrounds, and futures, across politics and government, Hollywood and the arts, tech and business, sports and science—some recovering, some relapsing, some just barely holding on, but all sharing experiences and insights we need to better understand. You’ll also meet those trying to help them through—parents, siblings, spouses, therapists, bosses, doctors, and friends who create the extended families needed to support care and wellness.
 
The personal stories they share with Kennedy and Fried are intimate, sometimes shocking, always revealing. And they are essential reading for caregivers, family members, policymakers, and the general public—just as they are for those who often feel alone in experiencing these challenges themselves.

Échantillon de lecture
Chapter One

Philomena

Philomena Kebec is a crusading tribal rights, human rights, and public health attorney for the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians. The forty-five-year-old lawyer lives in a small town just outside the reservation on the northern tip of Wisconsin with her daughter, her son, and her son's father. But she grew up in a bigger city in nearby Minneapolis, Minnesota-and her advocacy and fierce legal acumen are internationally known.

She has done everything from arguing as a staff attorney at the Indian Law Resource Center in Washington for the UN declaration of rights for all Indigenous peoples in the world to creating an innovative, hyperlocal, all-volunteer harm reduction and needle exchange program serving tribal and nontribal communities in northern Wisconsin.

One podcaster nicknamed her "the bad-ass woman from Bad River."

I was introduced to Philomena by my friend Michael Botticelli, the former director of National Drug Control Policy for the Obama administration and an addiction medicine expert who is in long-term recovery himself. He told me I should meet her, but he didn't want to say why.

Within minutes of talking to her, we had moved past her work, and she started discussing what had really been going on in her life. I immediately recognized that while she had been keeping a lot of her experiences to herself in her professional life, she was actually quite accustomed to talking about them-but primarily in the safety of twelve-step recovery meetings. People who share in meetings quickly connect to one another, regardless of the differences in age or circumstance.

I have always gone to tiny, private twelve-step meetings, first in D.C., with fellow public officials who couldn't be open enough about their addictions to risk being seen by the larger recovery public at a meeting.

(Throughout the book I'm using "twelve-step" to refer to all types of regular peer support meetings for addictions. These originated in the 1930s when "Bill W." wrote out the twelve steps and created Alcoholics Anonymous, later followed by Narcotics Anonymous and groups for loved ones. There are now many twelve-step groups not affiliated with AA or NA, or strictly following their traditional insistence on secrecy and discouragement of psychiatric and addiction medications. So I'm using the general term.)

Philomena told me she had been in reco…