Patrick Kennedy + Stephen Fried: Profiles in Mental Health Courage

PATRICK JOSEPH KENNEDY II (b.1967) is a retired politician and mental health advocate. From 1995 to 2011, he served as a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from Rhode Island’s 1st congressional district, and was the first Generation X member of congress when he took office in 1995. He is a former member of the Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission and a co-founder of One Mind, a mental health nonprofit.

Born and raised in Boston, he is the youngest child and second son of the long-time Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, and is a nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy and former U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Providence College. He was elected to the Rhode Island House of Representatives in 1989, becoming the youngest member of the Kennedy family to hold elected office. He was then elected to represent Rhode Island’s 1st congressional district. He was re-elected, serving from January 3, 1995, to January 3, 2011 (the 104th to 111th Congresses). In the House, Kennedy served on the Armed Services and Natural Resources Committees before being appointed to the Appropriations Committee.

Since leaving Congress, Kennedy has written and spoken publicly about his long struggle with bipolar disorder and drug addiction and become a leading advocate for a stronger mental health care system in the United States.

Partnering with Shari and Garen Staglin in 2011, Kennedy launched One Mind (formerly One Mind for Research) with the intention of promoting the study of brain diseases. One Mind supports better diagnostics and new therapies to advance neuroscience discovery and fills the gaps in research funding by disseminating donor-supported funds.

Kennedy founded The Kennedy Forum in 2013, a behavioral health nonprofit, of which he is CEO, with the mission of leading the national dialogue on transforming mental health and addiction care delivery by uniting mental health advocates, business leaders, and government agencies around a common set of principles, including full implementation of the Federal Parity Law.

In 2015, he co-authored “A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction” with Stephen Fried, which details his journey through mental illness, addiction, and his ongoing political advocacy for federal legislation in support of mental health and addiction health care.  In 2024, Kennedy and Fried co-authored “Portraits in Mental Health Courage.”

STEPHEN FRIED is an investigative journalist, non-fiction author, and lecturer who teaches at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. His first book, “Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia,” (Pocket) a biography of model Gia Carangi and her era, was published in 1993. He has since written “Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs,” (Bantam 1998), an investigation of medication safety and the pharmaceutical-industrial complex; “The New Rabbi” (Bantam 2002), which weaves the dramatic search for a new religious leader at one of the nation’s most influential houses of worship with a meditation on the author’s Jewish upbringing; “Husbandry” (Bantam 2007), a collection of essays on marriage and men; “Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West—One Meal at a Time” (Bantam 2010), the bestselling biography of restaurant and hotel entrepreneur  Fred Harvey; and “RUSH: Revolution, Madness & the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father” (Crown 2018). In 2015, he co-authored the New York Times bestseller “A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction” (Blue Rider 2015) and “Profiles in Mental Health Courage” (Dutton 2024) with former Congressman and mental health advocate Patrick J. Kennedy.

— Wikipedia

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