Ex-Congressman Patrick Kennedy To Release Memoir

A family photo printed in the book depicts him in his bedroom as a young child showing off his aquarium to Henry Kissinger.

A former Rhode Island congressman is hoping to change the way people view mental illness and addiction.

The book’s depiction of family dysfunction is being greeted with surprise in the late senator’s tight-knit group of former staffers, who understand how loyalty is prized among the Kennedys.

He tells of times he believes his father let him down and how he and his siblings tried to stage an intervention when their senator dad was drinking heavily in the wake of a rape charge against their cousin William Kennedy Smith.

“The books were often riddled with inaccuracies, but also riddled with facts that probably would have been much easier to hear first from close family members and perhaps with a few context”, Kennedy writes. It happened one year as the anniversary approached.

“A Common Struggle” includes political and personal stories from Patrick’s childhood, from his 16 years serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, and from his current mission of advocacy for behavioral health policy. Ted Kennedy’s addiction to alcohol and the substance abuse problems faced by other members of the Kennedy clan has sparked a bitter rift in the family. Ted walked out of the room and closed the door.

He says his father spoke with him only once about his 1969 vehicle accident on Chappaquiddick Island that killed his father’s passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne.

The elder Kennedy writes that he believed “that I was deemed not worthy to cover homage to their father because I had an illness which can be uncomfortable or inconvenient”, he wrote. 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.

His relationship with his father was chilly for years after that, he writes. Per the Associated Press, Patrick Kennedy’s older brother, Edward Kennedy Jr., released a statement on Sunday saying that he was “heartbroken” over the “inaccurate and unfair portrayal of our family”. His parents’ separation in 1977 was explained as his mother wanting to spend more time in Boston to study music, Patrick says.