Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Patrick Kennedy on Autism,Mental Health, Addiction, and Political Change
Tue, 29 Apr 2025
Send us a textPatrick Kennedy shares his journey from Congressman to mental health advocate, revealing how his family history and personal struggles with addiction shaped his mission to transform America's approach to mental health care.• Passed the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act by attaching it to the 2008 bank bailout bill• Advocates for unifying mental health, addiction, and intellectual disability communities around shared needs• Explains how our healthcare system focuses on "sick care" rather than prevention and community support• Identifies how isolation and siloed treatment approaches fail those with co-occurring conditions• Describes meeting colleagues in Congress who privately struggled with mental health but couldn't publicly acknowledge it• Working with faith communities to create support networks for families affected by mental health challenges• Emphasizes that housing stability and employment opportunities are essential components of recovery• Founded the Kennedy Forum to build political power for mental health advocacy• Promotes his book "Profiles in Mental Health Courage" featuring stories of individuals and familiesTell everyone everywhere about Why Not Me? The World, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone everywhere that you are not alone in this world.https://tonymantor.comhttps://Facebook.com/tonymantorhttps://instagram.com/tonymantorhttps://twitter.com/tonymantorhttps://youtube.com/tonymantormusicintro/outro music bed written by T. WildWhy Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Chapter 1: Who is Patrick Kennedy and what is his background?
Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me? The World, Humanity Over Handcuffs special event. Joining us today is Patrick Kennedy, a retired American politician and mental health advocate. He was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives who served from 1995 to 2011.
As the youngest son of Senator Ted Kennedy and nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy and former Senator Robert Kennedy, he joins us to share his journey of becoming a mental health advocate. We are honored to have him join us today. Thanks for coming on. Oh, thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. You've written a lot of bills while you was in the House.
What kind of strategies went into formulating those bills to try and get them passed so the outcome is, of course, helping the people that need it?
Chapter 2: What motivated Patrick Kennedy to become a mental health advocate?
It was more driven out of first this general interest to promote mental health and addiction. I instinctively knew that this was a marginalized population. And I definitely think that my having grown up in my family really sensitized me to that with my aunt starting Special Olympics and with my dad's work to try to build health care coverage.
And in addition to the Americans with Disability Act, we need something similar to advocate for mental health and addiction. And of course, my own experience as a policymaker made me realize that we had siloed the elements of an advocacy movement so that everybody was
defined by their diagnoses rather than defined by their needs, which frankly overlap, whether you have autism, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, addiction, schizophrenia, bipolar. 99% of our agenda, home and community-based care, is really what should propel a more cohesive, organized, and sophisticated effort to promote a new paradigm of delivery for care that involves the community and social supports.
Frankly, do more for people with these illnesses than just purely medical interventions. Although the only way we pay for healthcare today is through medical intervention. I have to say a lot of growing up and watching my father in the Senate and my own experience really I think helped me
organize my thinking, which of course itself was influenced by having read a lot about the civil rights movement, my dad's work on disability and healthcare rights. That's how I figured out this is an area that I want to make a difference in because frankly, unlike a lot of areas of society, this is not a well-developed
area in terms of a level of sophistication that is required to meet the current demands that our country has for a much better, effective mental health and addiction system. And of course, I ran for office so many times. I understand the basic calculus of how you get elected.
And my wife ran for Congress a couple of years ago, and it really became super apparent to me how much we were missing in this space that she could get 100 bricklayers the day after tomorrow to show up somewhere, but she couldn't get 100 of anything on mental health to do anything for her. On election day, she had 5,000 teachers all throughout the district holding signs and passing out leaflets.
Yes, it's tough to get the support sometimes on something that is just so important.
This is a bigger issue than any other issue in the country, but we have no listserv. We have no advocacy movement per se. That's what's really shaped my thinking about this is my own experience. And then, of course, I have lived experience, someone who's dealt with addiction and mental illness, both myself personally and within my family. And I instinctively knew, too, that
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Chapter 3: How did Patrick Kennedy pass the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act?
What can we do to change that so that people still have the opportunity to get help so they can get out there, work, have a family, and contribute the way they initially thought that they could?
I think that we need to organize ourselves politically to get the policy changes we need. When you think about the graying of America, you think about Alzheimer's, and frankly, you think about other communities that suffer from great disabilities. You think about all of the caregivers, predominantly women, and how this impacts the whole family.
What's missing in all of those issues is the family and the holistic approach. Because as I said, We look at these diagnoses in a vacuum. We think about just the medical side. Frankly, parity, Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act has become a major tool for the IDD community, particularly autism, because families with children with autism need all the wraparound services.
And those wraparound services are essential in the treatment, if you will, the delivery of health care to that population. So it's really been parity that has become a really great tool for families to get what they need because the parity law highlights the disparities in access to care, the disparities in reimbursement by insurance companies.
But my point is that we all share, as I said, this need for home and community-based care. And we as a country are just going into this new space where we're sick and tired of the healthcare system as it currently stands, which is only focused on sick care, right? We have no appreciation or how we could deliver healthcare health to more Americans at a fraction of the current cost.
We are four times higher than the next industrialized nation in terms of the cost of health care. And yet our people are going without health care. And it's too financially prohibitive. And it's the leading cause of bankruptcy. So you have to say to yourself, when are we going to fix this?
It's currently money that's being eaten up and really end of the life care, end of illness care when it just consumes so many resources. When if we could move things upstream, we could really mitigate downstream costs. And this is not just some hope or wish. This has been demonstrated by science. But our medical system makes profits constantly. based upon quarterly and yearly budgets.
In other words, we don't have budgets that reflect the return on investment for a longer period of time, which if we did, we would pay for things that we don't pay for today that would have cumulatively much bigger return on investment. The bottom line is we just need to have a more sophisticated approach.
And I think that when I kept running for office, I would have certain constituencies that would support me. What they asked for, I prioritized because they were influential in my political career. What I find now with these issues is we don't have the political power that we need to get policymakers to pay
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Chapter 4: What are the challenges in political advocacy for mental health and addiction?
autism feel socially alienated. They are marginalized. They are bullied. and hence they have a lot of anxiety. But when you think they must be taken care of by the IDD system, the IDD system doesn't think of itself as a mental health system in addition to an IDD. So you can have group homes, you can have supports, but those supports do not have the insight about the mental health needs
of people with intellectual disabilities because they're no different than anyone else.
In fact, my aunt Rosemary, who was born with an intellectual disability, had also a psychiatric condition of bipolar, which was the reason my grandparent chose to give her a lobotomy, which of course was a disaster, and which relegated her to really the secrecy of a convent out in Wisconsin, which was not acknowledged by my family until President Kennedy died.
in his second year in office, said to my Aunt Eunice that it was time that the family come out and acknowledge Rosemary's situation. Ironically, that tragedy in my family sparked a movement because
It was Eunice who then took that feeling of being isolated and marginalized and turned it into something called the Special Olympics, where sport was the medium by which families and athletes could feel a part of. And what a miracle that Special Olympics has been. But the point I'm making is Rosemary had both an intellectual disability and a psychiatric disability. condition.
And we still, even to this day, only focus on one or the other. We don't focus about bringing holistic care to people.
Yes, I 100% agree. We definitely need to find a unity so that everyone can be helped. Unfortunately, in our country, we live in a society, if it doesn't affect us, it's not a problem. But then when it does affect us, it's a huge problem. Congress is exactly the same way. They live their lives just like everyone else.
How do we get the point across to them that this is an issue that has to be addressed so that everyone in our country can live a fulfilled life?
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Chapter 5: How do autism, intellectual disabilities, and mental health intersect?
We have to meet each constituent group on what their audiences and how our issue will penetrate with that group. It's not a monolithic message that will work with all groups the same. I will say that when I was in Congress and I had gotten a DWI and was in treatment and then I came back I got a lot of my colleagues who, frankly, I'd never really talked to before reach out to me.
They had sent me notes, get well notes and so forth when I was in rehab. And I went to their offices. They always just wanted to meet with just me. And by the time that whole experience ended, I knew dozens of my colleagues who themselves were struggling with addiction or depression, anxiety, or depression. who obviously had family members who struggled.
I can guarantee you, none of them knew each other because no one leads with this, right? Everybody knows if someone struggled and fought the good fight with cancer, largely for people in recovery from addiction, like myself, there's a quote, anonymity, the anonymous nature of these illnesses. And that really limits our ability to connect to others in society and also to build a political movement.
So I am a big believer in the spiritual nature of anonymity. I think all I say is I'm a member of a 12-step recovery group, and I'm a person in long-term recovery. I have not, in that phrase, Tony said anything about what 12-step group I'm in.
And so for those of my friends and fellow trudgers who are listening to this, it's possible to be political and public about our recoveries without violating the 11th tradition of our 12-step recovery movement. There's at least 28 million Americans in long-term recovery. No one knows who these people are.
because they're all in church basements and they keep silent about it because they think that's the way you should do. So if you want to build a political movement, it's pretty hard to do if people aren't willing to raise their hands. And I think the shame on intellectual disabilities have been dramatically changed, and I think really in large part to major contributions from people like my aunt.
I don't think people really know how many other people around them really struggle.
Now, you wrote a book. In that book, didn't you address some of these issues with the families and how things could be adapted to help them?
With my book, Profiles in Mental Health Courage, I feature 12 people and their families. So, Tony, to your point, the family is left out of this conversation.
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Chapter 6: What role does stigma and anonymity play in addiction and mental health recovery?
If we looked at the one in four, one in three, whatever the number is that they cooked up in the last year or two on how many people this affects, you lose sight of the fact that it's one in one because every single family in America has someone who's been suffering. It's just impossible not to. We all have brains like every other organ of the body. It gets sick just like anything else.
It has challenges. And we need to treat these illnesses as opposed to shame people who are suffering from them. But in each of these stories, I include the family members, because for those of us who are fortunate to make it out of the depth of despair.
We're the only ones who tell our story, in a sense, because if it's a story that's murky and not black and white and not crystal clear that you've succeeded, you don't tell your story because you feel that shame again.
What we're missing in America is the feeling that they're not all happy ending stories, but there's some real bright spots when people are struggling, trying to, and that has to be celebrated. In this book, A lot of the people who I feature, they're still struggling. It's important that people don't feel alone. The worst thing people can feel is that there's no one else like them out there.
And then they feel that desperation and hopelessness. And I want people to know that in the real world, these issues play themselves out in the criminal justice system, obviously in the workplace, in the healthcare system, and most importantly, in the family. which, by the way, does not have the tools to talk about these issues because there's silence, right?
There's no kind of narratives that help people come to grips with what it is to live with someone who is struggling with one of these illnesses. So everybody's affected. And I think, Tony, the way we've changed the kind of political dynamic is also to change the cultural dynamic. So the culture really still judges people.
It's just very dangerous to do that and think that we can get the kind of attention because we're dismissed and we are devalued and that really through the implicit kind of well you're not capable it's like what we do with seniors so they're in the scrap heap they're not able to contribute anymore to society they're no longer useful
We have, unfortunately, this still is very persistent feeling, unless you're active in the workforce, unless you're really productive, that you're somehow not worthy. One of the things I'm working on now is to try to get the ecumenical community, the faith community, to weigh in heavy on these issues.
My church, the Catholic Church, has been really missing in action on helping its community of parishioners. So in my church and where I live, people know that I'm in recovery.
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Chapter 7: How can unified advocacy improve mental health policies in the US?
I'm sure because people know what you're going through, what you've been through, they probably reach out to you for advice.
I am inundated, Tony. from fellow parishioners who are looking for help for their loved ones, because I'm the only one they know. I had the good fortune meeting with the Holy Father a month ago, Cardinal Cupich from Chicago, Cardinal Tobin, who's here in my state now in New Jersey, and they were very interested in really ramping up Way Catholic Church
supports lay people, which is like non-clergy for people who are not familiar with the Catholic Church. So we have to empower community members to help each other. And President Kennedy's, the thing I find whenever I've traveled is that people were so inspired by the very simple phrase, ask not what your country could do for you, but what you could do for your country.
People want to be of service to others. You go to a Special Olympics event, people are joyful, happy, Why? Because they're in communion with others. They're celebrated for their humanity, their common sense of dignity, the dignity of every human being. And we're all children of God. And we're all helping each other. There's a feeling of fraternity.
And the happiest I am, Tony, on any given week is when I get a phone call to ask someone who asked me to help A loved one can get insurance because I can get help with their insurance company since that's been my life's work. I know all those folks.
That must give you just a great feeling to have the ability to help some of these people.
That's when I'm feeling the best about myself because I'm useful to someone else. And frankly, in recovery, that's the secret sauce to the psychic change that we have to have in order to have long-term sobriety. We have to have a conscious contact. with a higher power, which means we cannot be feeling as if we're controlling everything.
We have to be just servants to doing the next right thing and helping others who are in need of struggling because that's how we get relief from the burden of our own self-centered, selfish thinking, which creates torture internally in terms of our feeling of worrying about we're going to lose what we have or not get what we want. And I think we as a country need to really embrace that.
And frankly, it's a very bipartisan and, as I said, spiritual thing. So I'm working with the Catholic Church to try to do some things. And we are now finding synagogues and mosques and other faith leaders who are interested in doing because, frankly, these are ubiquitous. Every faith tradition is dealing with the challenges that families are facing because the church doesn't always know.
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