Patrick Kennedy Now Suspects mental disorder became in the back of Two 'Kennedy Curse' family Tragedies

The many tragedies suffered with the aid of one of america's most noted households have lengthy been attributed to the "Kennedy Curse" – but former Rhode Island Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy tells individuals he believes mental disease became accountable for at the least two of the darker chapters in Kennedy history.

Patrick explores his household's struggles with mental ailment and addiction in his controversial new memoir, a standard struggle: a private journey throughout the previous and way forward for mental sickness and addiction, in addition to in individuals's newest difficulty, during which he explains how improved analysis and remedy could have spared two of his family.

First there may be the heartbreaking story of his Aunt Rosemary, President John F. Kennedy's sister who become left permanently incapacitated through a disastrous lobotomy and then hidden far from public view – and from her eight siblings – for many years in a facility for the mentally disabled.

Rosemary Kennedy and her father, Joseph P. Kennedy

Bettmann / Corbis

Rosemary become born intellectually disabled, but Patrick suspects that she also suffered from mental illness, which, if diagnosed and appropriately treated, might have spared her the devastating lobotomy his grandfather Joseph P. Kennedy ordered to manage his aunt's outbursts. "She might have lived a lifestyles very freed from disability," Patrick laments to people.

Then there turned into the premature death of his cousin, Robert F. Kennedy's son David, who fatally overdosed at 28 – a tragedy Patrick now believes became related to untreated PTSD.
"David lost his father so violently after which, having to watch all of it on television," Patrick says of his uncle RFK's assassination. "I don't believe any one understood that [PTSD] become a true harm that, if untreated, would kill him."

The Untold Story of JFK's Sister, Rosemary Kennedy, and the Disastrous Lobotomy Ordered with the aid of Her Father The intellectual health activist and former Congressman, forty eight, who additionally particulars his own struggles with drug dependancy, alcoholism and bipolar disorder in his new booklet, has been met with disappointment from his family unit. His brother, Ted Kennedy Jr., stated he's "heartbroken" by way of the "inaccurate and unfair portrayal of our household" and his mother, Joan, has denied engaged on the project with Patrick.

Regardless of "breaking the family unit code" via publishing the memoir, he has no regrets. "The older I get, the more I see secrecy because the enemy inside," he tells individuals.
"We still have a the right way to go, each in society and within my own family," he provides.