SA NEWS in conversation with Patrick J. Kennedy, PROFILES IN MENTAL HEALTH COURAGE

Several years ago, former Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, the nation’s leading policy advocate on mental illness and addiction, broke through taboo and shared the story of his personal and family challenges with these issues in his bestselling memoir, A Common Struggle. Now, he and his Common Struggle coauthor, award-winning healthcare journalist Stephen Fried, have created PROFILES IN MENTAL HEALTH COURAGE (Dutton, April 30, 2024), a powerful new book based on dozens of exclusive interviews, sharing the untold stories of a special group of individuals who bravely agreed to talk openly 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, Kennedy adapts his uncle’s idea to showcase the acts of “mental health courage” that happen in private: what it takes for those living with mental illness and addiction to find care and treat their illnesses, and the risk they take telling their stories in a country without adequate mental health understanding, infrastructure, and care. The US has an undeniable mental health crisis in our families, our workplaces, our jails, and on our streets and the only way to address it is to face this reality by listening closely and learning from the experiences of those around us.
PROFILES IN MENTAL HEALTH COURAGE takes an unflinching look at the experience of mental illness and addiction, introducing readers to people of many 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. #TVinspires #kennedy #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness
Xavier Ramirez in conversation with Patrick J. Kennedy for SA NEWS