Speaker 1: In my family. Even though we're a big in social
Speaker 1: justice like everyone else, we felt really imprisoned by the
Speaker 1: shame and stigma of mental health and addiction issues. We
Speaker 1: wouldn't talk about them, even though we'reas I said, we're
Speaker 1: very progressive in all the rest because the power of
Speaker 1: shame and stigma are so strong. I did not become
Speaker 1: a leader as some profile encouraged. I reacted to a
Speaker 1: situation where the fellow that I had been in drug
Speaker 1: rehab with had sold his story of being in rehab
Speaker 1: with the Kennedy to the National Inquirer, and so I
Speaker 1: had to see my own face on the cover of
Speaker 1: the National Choir with the headlines Patrick Kennedy drug addict
Speaker 1: and this is going into my second term in public office.
Speaker 1: Of course, I thought my political career was over.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: That was Patrick Kennedy, some of the late Senator Ted
Speaker 3: Kennedy and former US Congressman sharing the personal story behind
Speaker 3: the very public spotlight. I'm Andrea Waters King and this
Speaker 3: is my legacy, hosted by me, my husband Martin Luther
Speaker 3: King the Third, and our good friends Mark Kilberger and
Speaker 3: Craig Kilberg. Patrick and his wife Amy Kennedy, an educator
Speaker 3: and mental health leader in her own right, open up
Speaker 3: about breaking generational silence and the hope they found in
Speaker 3: telling the truth out loud. It's a rare, honest look
Speaker 3: at what it means to carry both pain and purpose
Speaker 3: and keep showing up for the people you love. Today,
Speaker 3: we're bringing you a conversation straight from the Lake Nna
Speaker 3: Impact Form at the KPMG's Learning an Innovation Center's Lake
Speaker 3: House in Orlando's Lake Nona Community, a place where the
Speaker 3: brightest minds come together to shape the future of health,
Speaker 3: wellness and medical innovation.
Speaker 4: Let's go. Welcome to my legacy. We're honored to have
Speaker 4: with us today, Congressman Patrick Kennedy, who of course, comes
Speaker 4: from one of America's most iconic political families. His father,
Speaker 4: Senator Ted Kennedy, was known as the Lion of the Senate.
Speaker 4: Senator Kennedy dedicated nearly five decades to fighting for civil rights,
Speaker 4: health care, and social justice. Of course, Patrick is forging
Speaker 4: his own legacy. He served as a US Congressman for
Speaker 4: sixteen years. He was the driving force behind the Mental
Speaker 4: Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act that required health insurance
Speaker 4: companies to provide coverage for mental illness and addiction treatment,
Speaker 4: just as they would for other illnesses. Together with his
Speaker 4: wife Amy, they founded the Kennedy Forum to ensure that
Speaker 4: mental health is an essential part of our healthcare system
Speaker 4: and to continue to break the stigma around mental health.
Speaker 4: As our listeners know, what makes my legacy unique is
Speaker 4: we don't just hear from extraordinary individuals. We hear from
Speaker 4: the people who know them best, those who have been
Speaker 4: with them on their life journey, Patrick, would you please
Speaker 4: do us the honor of introducing to us your wife Amy?
Speaker 1: Thank you. Well. My wife Amy and I met. I
Speaker 1: was speaking to a coalition that was really focused on
Speaker 1: developmental disabilities and her father was a special ed teacher,
Speaker 1: but he got sick and so he sent Amy in
Speaker 1: his place. And I was honoring my aunt, Unis Shriver
Speaker 1: for having started Special Olympics, And of course afterwards, I
Speaker 1: was asked to, you know, sign some things, and all
Speaker 1: I could do is wait because Amy was in the
Speaker 1: line for me to sign her program, and I was disheartened.
Speaker 1: When she came up, she says, I just need to
Speaker 1: do this for my father because he loves your family.
Speaker 1: And I thought, oh my god, it's guy who thought
Speaker 1: I was going to be in good shape. But Amy,
Speaker 1: a public school teacher, ran for Congress a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago and tracked the attention of our Governor Murphy
Speaker 1: and New Jersey such that he put her in charge
Speaker 1: of the National Governor's Association effort to define the solutions
Speaker 1: to helping address children's mental health. She's co founder of
Speaker 1: the Kennedy Forum. And of course, if you're talking about
Speaker 1: mental health prevention, prevention, prevention, so she's led that effort.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't have such a big crisis in this country
Speaker 1: if we did a better job at earlier intervention. And
Speaker 1: as a public school teacher, she's been on the front
Speaker 1: lines of seeing these challenges.
Speaker 4: What an extraordinary dedication both of you to mental health
Speaker 4: into working on such a critical issue. And as I
Speaker 4: sit here with an extraordinary couple who have come together
Speaker 4: an iconic family, a school teacher dedicated towards mental health,
Speaker 4: I look at both of you, co creating and co
Speaker 4: leading this institution, and I can't help but think of
Speaker 4: another iconic family where an individual came from her own
Speaker 4: activism roots and married in and the two of them
Speaker 4: co leading and co creating their own passion on civil rights.
Speaker 4: We know Martin's name, we know Patrick's name. But I
Speaker 4: love in both your interactions that you called out all
Speaker 4: that you do and the extraordinary work that you do
Speaker 4: is with your life partners. I love the tributes because
Speaker 4: Martin you have said that Andrea is the driving force
Speaker 4: behind a lot of your action, and Patrick, I love
Speaker 4: that you just said Amy is the driving force behind
Speaker 4: a lot of your action. It was just lovely to
Speaker 4: hear it.
Speaker 3: Obviously is no secret that our families have worked together
Speaker 3: for decades now. In fact, at your aunt's funeral just
Speaker 3: a few months ago, Martin talked about the fact that
Speaker 3: he had worked with mar Kennedy's then he can count
Speaker 3: and more projects.
Speaker 4: But you are Could you tell me a little bit
Speaker 4: about these two families and how you guys have worked
Speaker 4: together over the years.
Speaker 3: I think that Martin said it well in his speech
Speaker 3: that history knit us together, but love has kept us together.
Speaker 3: Our families both have dedicated so much to public service
Speaker 3: and to really creating I think a country and a
Speaker 3: world that works for all of us. And when you
Speaker 3: have those connections from the work that your father did
Speaker 3: with his uncle to uncles actually coming to the house
Speaker 3: after the assassination and One of the things I think
Speaker 3: a lot of people also don't realize is that after
Speaker 3: RFK was assassinated, if I'm correct, your mother rode home
Speaker 3: on a plane with it was Jackie Kennedy, elf the
Speaker 3: Kennedy together, this generation, I mean Martin, he paged for
Speaker 3: your father, campaigned for you, Amy, and we just you know,
Speaker 3: we raise our children together. We both have sixteen year olds.
Speaker 3: We you know, we see each other. You know, ever
Speaker 3: we hug each other, and so it's like family.
Speaker 1: Well, like your dad said, we're all caught in an
Speaker 1: inescapable web of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Speaker 1: What affects one directly affects alt indirectly. But in our
Speaker 1: families that's been more true than any two families, given
Speaker 1: all of the similarities and the deaths and tragic deaths,
Speaker 1: but in the common cause of social justice. And I
Speaker 1: can tell you one of the greatest sources of pride
Speaker 1: in my families having worked with your family.
Speaker 3: As are we thanks and we'll just so through that
Speaker 3: it continues, it continues generation the generation. But Patrick, your
Speaker 3: family obviously name is one of the most well known
Speaker 3: in American history, a family which we've said has deeply
Speaker 3: rooted in public service. So for you, who would you
Speaker 3: say would be the biggest influences in your childhood and
Speaker 3: what are some of the lessons that shaped you the most.
Speaker 1: Well. I was really blessed because, as you know, my
Speaker 1: dad was larger than life, and he included me in
Speaker 1: his life. So even though I was just a little kid,
Speaker 1: he had me sit in with him when he was
Speaker 1: getting briefings on the issues of the day. He had
Speaker 1: me travel with him when he was doing health care
Speaker 1: hearings across the country, and he introduced me to all
Speaker 1: the people that were coming through our house or part
Speaker 1: of the civic life of our countries, so that I
Speaker 1: kind of felt like got a front row seat. It
Speaker 1: reduced the kind of fear and the hesitancy to be
Speaker 1: active because we had such great morale models to show
Speaker 1: us what activism meant.
Speaker 3: Amy, I like to say it that I think that
Speaker 3: one of my superpowers is that I was raised in
Speaker 3: a normal family, bringing the levelness of normalcy. Do you
Speaker 3: find that as well, having you know, a very strong woman,
Speaker 3: very accomplished woman, and you know, bringing up children in
Speaker 3: this legacy, if you will, that could be larger than
Speaker 3: life definitely.
Speaker 2: I think it's been very grounding, not just for my kids,
Speaker 2: but for Patrick as well. You know, it was when
Speaker 2: Patrick left Congress and that had been his life. He
Speaker 2: also that was the year that his dad had just passed,
Speaker 2: and I think he was a little bit kind of
Speaker 2: looking for roots, and even though he has this really
Speaker 2: big family, to be able to kind of scale it
Speaker 2: down to something that was in its simplest forms, being
Speaker 2: able to come be part of my family, which has
Speaker 2: just been really centered in South Jersey for you know, generations,
Speaker 2: and we're tight knit, small school teacher family. One Christmas
Speaker 2: he came and then he never left, and it was, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was, you know, wonderful for our family, but also
Speaker 2: I think really helped him kind of reset for a
Speaker 2: life after DC that was going to be centered around
Speaker 2: his own family. And for our kids, you know, there's
Speaker 2: really cool things that they get to do. But then
Speaker 2: there's also a little bit of my mom that you know,
Speaker 2: comes into play where I'm saying, don't throw that out,
Speaker 2: we need to you can eat that, you know, whatever
Speaker 2: it is. That tailor's it back down to a different level.
Speaker 2: And he always says, I swear your parents are still
Speaker 2: living in the Great Depression. Why I use your mom
Speaker 2: saving that tenfoil? You know, I was like, well, you'll say,
Speaker 2: we're teaching the kids something.
Speaker 3: Absolutely coming up on my legacy, why silence never protected anyone,
Speaker 3: and what it really takes to change the story for
Speaker 3: the next generation, Like follow and share this with someone
Speaker 3: who needs to hear this right now. Now back to
Speaker 3: my legacy.
Speaker 4: As my co hosts know, I've been especially excited for
Speaker 4: this conversation because I want, through our listeners and viewers,
Speaker 4: to talk more about mental health. It's personal and families
Speaker 4: across America. It's personal in my family and Candor have
Speaker 4: lost my sister for mental health issues after a long battle.
Speaker 4: It changed my wife's life in the most profound way.
Speaker 4: She went back to school, she got her doctorate, she
Speaker 4: became a psychologist. She works in promotion prevention, the very
Speaker 4: work that you do through the Kennedy Forum. And so
Speaker 4: as I sit here with the two of you, I
Speaker 4: love the fact that you have busted through stigma in
Speaker 4: such a powerful way and through politics. But since we're
Speaker 4: talking about, you know, all my legacy origin stories, I
Speaker 4: got to go all the way back to the origin
Speaker 4: because when I look at the courage. It took at
Speaker 4: a very young age, Patrick, to be open, you know,
Speaker 4: to battle addiction, bipolar disorder, rehabit eighteen. Yeah, can you
Speaker 4: take us back to how that moment in your life
Speaker 4: and frankly, how formative it was for you sitting here today.
Speaker 1: Well, of course, in my family, even though we're big
Speaker 1: in social justice like everyone else, we felt really imprisoned
Speaker 1: by the shame and stigma of mental health and addiction issues.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't talk about them, even though whereas I said,
Speaker 1: we're very progressive in all the rest because the power
Speaker 1: of shame and stigma are so strong. I did not
Speaker 1: become a leader as some profile and courage that my uncle,
Speaker 1: you know, wrote about profiles and courage. I reacted to
Speaker 1: a situation where the fellow I had been in drug
Speaker 1: rehab with had sold his story of being in rehab
Speaker 1: with the Kennedy to the National Inquirer, And so I
Speaker 1: had to see my own face on the cover of
Speaker 1: the National Choir with the headlines Patrick Kennedy drug addict
Speaker 1: and this is my going into my second term in
Speaker 1: public office. Of course, I thought my political career was over.
Speaker 1: This was back in nineteen ninety one when these were
Speaker 1: really big issues. Of course, today nothing knocks you out
Speaker 1: of the box because everything's fair game, but my constituency
Speaker 1: was really something. They really didn't like what had happened
Speaker 1: to me, and so they I was reelected. When I
Speaker 1: got to Washington, I could sponsor all this mental health legislation,
Speaker 1: including the one that I kind of became known for,
Speaker 1: which is the Mental Health Parody and Addiction Equedact. And
Speaker 1: I was the first name on that bill. I was
Speaker 1: the youngest member of Congress from the smallest state in
Speaker 1: the country, and yet I got to put my name
Speaker 1: number one on a bill that simply said that we
Speaker 1: had to treat the brain like any other organ of
Speaker 1: the body and have insurance coverage cover all the illnesses.
Speaker 1: Nobody wanted to be champion of the And if you
Speaker 1: had a bill with the title though had the words
Speaker 1: mental in it and addiction, I mean what politician wants
Speaker 1: to be the primary sponsor that? Because, of course the
Speaker 1: next question is, well, do you have a mental health
Speaker 1: issue or addiction issue? And no one wants to answer that,
Speaker 1: because of course we all do, and so they don't
Speaker 1: want to go down that rabbit hole. But for me,
Speaker 1: since this guy kind of rated on me. I was
Speaker 1: thrown out there and it ended up being one of
Speaker 1: the greatest things that ever happened in my life. So
Speaker 1: God works in mysterious ways, you.
Speaker 5: Know, Patrick, we have a lot in cooming, but certainly
Speaker 5: the significant and incredible family history. But also with that
Speaker 5: comes great expectations and challenges that are larger than life.
Speaker 5: I think about, and I'm grateful that my mom liberated
Speaker 5: me as a young person by saying, you don't have
Speaker 5: to be a minister, you don't have to be a
Speaker 5: human and civil rights leader, you don't have to go
Speaker 5: to Morehouse college. Just be your best self, and whatever
Speaker 5: that is we will support. Now we know your uncle
Speaker 5: Bobby and Jack fought for civil rights, and your whole family,
Speaker 5: and of course, as you mentioned, your aunt starting special Olympics.
Speaker 5: And your dad holds a special place in my heart
Speaker 5: because one of the reasons I ran for office was
Speaker 5: because of my serving as his page and seeing how
Speaker 5: laws were made. So I was inspired by his leadership
Speaker 5: throughout his life, as so many were as he became
Speaker 5: the lion of the Senate.
Speaker 1: Well, you know a lot of politicians when they leave
Speaker 1: office say they're getting out of politics to spend more
Speaker 1: time with their family. My case, I went into politics
Speaker 1: to closer to my family. When I got elected. My
Speaker 1: cousin Joe was congressman, my dad was obviously senator, my
Speaker 1: cousin Kathleen Lieutenanco or my cousin Mark in the state
Speaker 1: House in Maryland. But I got to be with my
Speaker 1: dad as a colleague, and then I got to have
Speaker 1: meals with him throughout the week. We'd always do lunch together,
Speaker 1: and so I had a chance to actually have a
Speaker 1: really different relationship beside kind of father son. It was
Speaker 1: kind of colleague, and I'm just so glad I had that,
Speaker 1: because you know, if you're a son with such an
Speaker 1: enormous figure as a father, it can be pretty intimidating.
Speaker 1: And it not that it wasn't, but I felt enormously
Speaker 1: blessed to have had the chance to actually be successful
Speaker 1: in his domain of political life. As you know, these
Speaker 1: people that were so impacted by our father's lives, you know,
Speaker 1: I got a front row seat to hearing how their
Speaker 1: lives were transformed by that service. So in a sense,
Speaker 1: my uncles never got to hear about how much they
Speaker 1: inspired and made a difference in people's lives. So I
Speaker 1: had lots of positive reinforcement. You know, these days when
Speaker 1: you think about politicians is just so negative and you know, depressing.
Speaker 1: It's wondering anybody runs for office. But when I was
Speaker 1: growing up, it was joyful, it was fun, it was interesting,
Speaker 1: and so that's why I feel so blessed to have
Speaker 1: been part of it.
Speaker 3: Coming up on my legacy, Patrick Share is what it
Speaker 3: felt like to break the silence his family had carried
Speaker 3: for generations. And the greatest lesson he learned, like follow
Speaker 3: and think about sending this to someone trying to do
Speaker 3: it differently than their parents. Now back to my legacy.
Speaker 4: Patrick, talk special Olympics with your family and civil rights
Speaker 4: with your family, And I think that was very modest
Speaker 4: of you because you didn't talk about the fact that,
Speaker 4: in your own right, the two of you have carved
Speaker 4: out mental health as the issue and we list all
Speaker 4: the family accomplishments, and so again I just want to
Speaker 4: go to this incredible work that you've done. And Patrick,
Speaker 4: you've always been open on mental health issues. You've talked
Speaker 4: about it, but the diagnosis of bipolar came later and
Speaker 4: a lot of people struggle without understanding diagnosis. So can
Speaker 4: you help us understand a little bit of what was
Speaker 4: your own personal journey, to understand what you were experiencing
Speaker 4: with the lens that that might help some of the
Speaker 4: listeners who are searching on their own journey.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, bipolar used to be known as manic depression.
Speaker 1: So I experienced a lot of mania, and part of
Speaker 1: the reason I was elected at twenty one to the
Speaker 1: state legislature and then elected to Congress at twenty seven.
Speaker 1: You'd tell you, well, what is anyone thinking doing that?
Speaker 1: But I, of course I had this fueled by the
Speaker 1: fact that my family did big things, So of course
Speaker 1: part of me thought, well, I can do big things.
Speaker 1: But you know, it was definitely over my skis, and
Speaker 1: so there was that. And then self medicating with alcohol
Speaker 1: and drugs was a way I used to manage those symptoms. Ironically,
Speaker 1: I had the best psychiatrists in the world, but they
Speaker 1: didn't often get the training and addiction. So I had
Speaker 1: great psychiatrists, but you know, most clinician physical doctors oncology,
Speaker 1: heart disease, diabetes, none of them get any training on
Speaker 1: mental health and addiction, which if you're going to treat
Speaker 1: your patients and you're an oncologist, being just diagnosing your
Speaker 1: patient with cancer and you don't know how to treat
Speaker 1: anxiety and depression, you're not doing your job. You're a
Speaker 1: heart doctrin and you don't know that if underlying depressions
Speaker 1: can increase your patient's chance for fatal heart type by
Speaker 1: four times, if you're treating a diabetic and we know
Speaker 1: how big that issue, and you're not addressing alcoholism. So
Speaker 1: these are relevant issues because we think of them again
Speaker 1: as isolation, but we have to think of the whole person.
Speaker 1: So what I want in the future is when people
Speaker 1: go to these other doctors as part of the health
Speaker 1: for those illnesses. Mental health is part of it as
Speaker 1: opposed to seeing, as I said again separate from the system,
Speaker 1: which it gets pushed to the margins because it's not
Speaker 1: paid for rankly. And the parity law that I've been
Speaker 1: working on, I've been trying to get the insurance companies
Speaker 1: to comply with it, and I will say it's really
Speaker 1: important for them to have transparency so we know what
Speaker 1: the access is to diabetic care as opposed to depression,
Speaker 1: anxiety or addiction care. There is enormous disparity, which means
Speaker 1: people have to pay more for those health care services
Speaker 1: because they're not accessible, they're out of network. Insurance companies
Speaker 1: have kind of ghost networks. What we're doing here at
Speaker 1: Lake Nona, and we have KPMG as one of our
Speaker 1: big partners, is showing the cost to the whole life
Speaker 1: of the person, not just their other medical costs, but
Speaker 1: the impact on their work world, how they're less engaged,
Speaker 1: what they call presenteeism where they're there but they're not
Speaker 1: really there, or absenteeism. You know, we've never fully managed
Speaker 1: to understand the full impact of mental health and addiction.
Speaker 1: I have just celebrated my fourteenth year of continuous sobriety.
Speaker 1: I didn't get sober until I was forty two. I
Speaker 1: was in and out of hospitals throughout my time in Congress,
Speaker 1: and most of them were obviously all anonymous. I made
Speaker 1: a big point, even though I'm the champion of anti stigma,
Speaker 1: to not say that I'm going in there, because I
Speaker 1: still felt the stigma. It's still very alive and well.
Speaker 1: So I went to the Mayo Clinic rather than Hazelton
Speaker 1: for my drug treatment because I thought if I went
Speaker 1: to the Mayo Clinic, people might think I had a
Speaker 1: real illness, you know, and that's when the height of
Speaker 1: my you know, work on parody. So this is very still,
Speaker 1: very stigmatized, and you know the best way to change
Speaker 1: that is to normalize mental health as part of overall health.
Speaker 5: So, in light of the fact that this is visible
Speaker 5: to our society, I think, in general, what is the pushback?
Speaker 5: Why are we not there yet?
Speaker 1: Well, we're not organized. So when Amy ran for Congresses,
Speaker 1: you know, we could get five thousand teachers show up
Speaker 1: all over our district. I couldn't get fifty mental health
Speaker 1: people because they're not organized. We don't have a list serve.
Speaker 1: It's as basic as that Martin where if you are running,
Speaker 1: you get the afl CIO, you get the iron workers,
Speaker 1: the she metal workers, the carpenters, the labors. In our place,
Speaker 1: we have the opioid, we have the I'll call you. So,
Speaker 1: we have the people who have families of overdose, who
Speaker 1: families of suicide, schizophrenia. We're all siloed and yet all
Speaker 1: of our issues benefit from ninety eight percent of the
Speaker 1: same things. But as a community, we don't look at
Speaker 1: each other as part of the greater whole, and so
Speaker 1: we exacerbate our own advocacy efforts. Being so anemic and
Speaker 1: we don't put the lights on the board. In terms
Speaker 1: of our voter power, I mean, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: you know the old Godfather movie, we're bigger than us
Speaker 1: steel Like, we are the biggest special interest group in
Speaker 1: the country that has no power, and so we need
Speaker 1: to be organized. If you ask me what's one of
Speaker 1: the biggest things we could do for our movement, it's
Speaker 1: just to organize the advocacy community, to get the vote out,
Speaker 1: to have an agenda where when people got elected they
Speaker 1: know what they were voting for. Now we have politicians
Speaker 1: telling us, oh, I have lived experience or I did this,
Speaker 1: but we need to know what their positions are on
Speaker 1: the big issues so we can hold them accountable and
Speaker 1: if they're not doing what needs to be done, we
Speaker 1: vote for someone who will. And if they know that
Speaker 1: we're as big and as widespread as we are, they're
Speaker 1: going to pay attention to us. So it's the old
Speaker 1: you know, political power is really going to determine what
Speaker 1: kind of system we have. And the reason we haven't
Speaker 1: made the pushback is stigma's still live. As person in recovery,
Speaker 1: I can say I'm in twelve step recovery that doesn't
Speaker 1: violate what's known as the eleventh tradition in twelve step
Speaker 1: recovery to be anonymous, because I haven't told you what
Speaker 1: program I'm in, But a lot of people in twelve
Speaker 1: step recovery think that they're not supposed to be public.
Speaker 1: We have twenty eight million Americans in long term recovery.
Speaker 1: No one knows who they are because they're living in
Speaker 1: church basements and they're anonymous. When I came back from
Speaker 1: rehab in Congress, I was amazed to how many of
Speaker 1: my colleagues had lived experience. Of course, none of them
Speaker 1: knew each other. They all knew me because I was
Speaker 1: all over the headlines, and so they all told me
Speaker 1: who they were, but none of them knew who each
Speaker 1: other were. And you know, you're not going to get
Speaker 1: this political power unless you organize, and that's something we
Speaker 1: really need to do.
Speaker 3: One thing, though, you mentioned disparity, and the thing that's
Speaker 3: very concerning is and you also mentioned early intervention. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, right now, with so many cuts being made
Speaker 3: to you know, Department of Education, and where this is
Speaker 3: where some people, some families are getting their only intervention,
Speaker 3: and there is a disparity even for access to services
Speaker 3: that will help mental health.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when we talk about access and look at network
Speaker 2: adequacy and what's possible, we want to make sure that
Speaker 2: there's no wrong door. That's why schools can serve a
Speaker 2: really important role in access and being able to make
Speaker 2: sure that everybody has an available space that providers can
Speaker 2: come in, that they can bill insurance from there. Because
Speaker 2: we know that schools are not going to have the funding,
Speaker 2: they're not capable of doing the billing. It's an administrative burden.
Speaker 2: And yet this is where students need to be able
Speaker 2: to get the care to have the not only the
Speaker 2: academic success that's going to change their trajectory on their
Speaker 2: emotional wellbeing. But if we don't do these interventions and
Speaker 2: we have to wait for a diagnosis, they'll wait ten
Speaker 2: years for a diagnosis and during that time it metastasizes.
Speaker 2: So we have to be able to get in early.
Speaker 2: We need to make schools where they're spending the majority
Speaker 2: of their day a place where they can access these services,
Speaker 2: and that's not going to be through the school guidance counselor.
Speaker 2: School guidance counselor is an essential part of the ecosystem
Speaker 2: for providing care and helping to identify students that need help.
Speaker 2: But you have to have licensed clinicians that are coming
Speaker 2: in and providing the service or be able to refer
Speaker 2: out to a community partner. And once they've set up
Speaker 2: that full continuum of care that can begin with school
Speaker 2: or can begin in the pediatrician's office with screening, Let's
Speaker 2: make sure that that can follow them throughout their life
Speaker 2: course and they can move in and out of that
Speaker 2: regardless of whether or not there's a diagnosis. We need
Speaker 2: to treat the symptoms that are impacting their daily life.
Speaker 3: Interesting and now, Amy, I know as you've experienced that
Speaker 3: mental health struggles don't just affect the person living with them,
Speaker 3: they also deeply impact the people who love them. For
Speaker 3: someone who has a family member diagnosed with bipolar disorder
Speaker 3: but feels unsure of how to help, what's the one
Speaker 3: thing that you would want them to know?
Speaker 2: It absolutely impacts the whole family. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: research around this. Some of the providers that are doing
Speaker 2: this work have shown that just by providing treatment to
Speaker 2: the individual that the famili's anxiety and depression are significantly reduced,
Speaker 2: so by forty percent. So it's really a twofer by
Speaker 2: supporting the person that you love, your own wellbeing is
Speaker 2: going to be improved. You know, you find that you're
Speaker 2: bringing the focus back to to how you're doing it.
Speaker 2: It can be very hard, you know, you want to
Speaker 2: share tasks equally, and so if Patrick is going to
Speaker 2: a meeting at noon instead of you know, helping me
Speaker 2: with something that I need, that's because that's his health
Speaker 2: and he has to do that. And I wouldn't begrudge
Speaker 2: him going for radiation or going to do some other thing.
Speaker 2: But if his workout really is an essential part of
Speaker 2: his well being, you know, he goes on that treadmill
Speaker 2: because it helps his brain and it's boosting his endorphins,
Speaker 2: and he's going to a twelve step meeting because that's
Speaker 2: important to him, then we have to prioritize that and
Speaker 2: make sure that there's a workaround. But he's also very flexible.
Speaker 2: You know, he's doing this, he's we're in line at something.
Speaker 2: He's got his twelve step meeting on his phone and
Speaker 2: he's listening to it as we stand in line. So
Speaker 2: he's trying to balance many things too. But I would
Speaker 2: just say, especially in the first year, there's a lot
Speaker 2: that has to be really prioritized around that person and
Speaker 2: their wellness. So I am also I've been sober for
Speaker 2: more than fourteen years because I'm supporting Patrick, and how
Speaker 2: much easier is that journey for him if he has
Speaker 2: a partner who is with him in that. We're going
Speaker 2: to events all the time, and you know, we're going
Speaker 2: home together. So let's let's both be in the same page,
Speaker 2: and we might at the same time go, Okay, I
Speaker 2: think we better roll because they're getting they're getting a
Speaker 2: little more fired up than than we are. So let's
Speaker 2: go together. And so having that kind of understanding of
Speaker 2: where we are comfortable and bedtime, all those things. We
Speaker 2: never underestimate how important sleep is in this whole process.
Speaker 1: But also we want to train up clinicians. To my point,
Speaker 1: earlier cardiologists don't know about mental health. On coologists don't know,
Speaker 1: and we need to upscale the rest of the medical
Speaker 1: profession in addition to train up a whole new cohort
Speaker 1: of providers. In the theoretical, but ultimately we have to do practically,
Speaker 1: meaning really see what kind of therapy works. Cognitive behavioral
Speaker 1: therapy works. In my view, it's the evidence form of treatment,
Speaker 1: which means you've got to do homework. Whoever knew that
Speaker 1: therapy was just talking to someone you know every other
Speaker 1: week for forty minutes. No, No, that's just the check in.
Speaker 1: The Real work is what happens between therapy visits. And
Speaker 1: here are the homework assignments where you can measure how
Speaker 1: you're changing your thinking based upon how you're actually changing
Speaker 1: your actions. So long story short, we have a deficit
Speaker 1: of literacy in this whole space. We have to educate
Speaker 1: everybody about what it really represents so that it's not
Speaker 1: this mysterious thing.
Speaker 4: There's so many amazing clips from this conversation that I
Speaker 4: hope our listeners and viewers share with family and loved ones.
Speaker 4: But I just want to shout out to you just
Speaker 4: talked about CBT is what a great treatment option, cognitive
Speaker 4: behavioral therapy. I love that you just talked about that,
Speaker 4: and Amy, I love that you talked so openly about
Speaker 4: the support that family gives and how you supported Patrick
Speaker 4: on this journey and how it was good for your
Speaker 4: own mental health. And the reason I want to shout
Speaker 4: out to that also is because Patrick, you've talked about
Speaker 4: how it really wasn't easy to share your story when
Speaker 4: you spoke out, even family members you said were pushed
Speaker 4: back candidly at the time, And can you help us
Speaker 4: understand why do you think that was and also why
Speaker 4: was it so important for you to push beyond that
Speaker 4: yourself to be so open.
Speaker 1: Well, everything that I thought was a secret in my
Speaker 1: family was not a secret. Their whole rows of bookshelves
Speaker 1: and libraries that tell all the stories that I thought
Speaker 1: no one should know because it was a family, you
Speaker 1: know ethos that we got to keep these things to ourselves.
Speaker 1: So in a sense, I never said anything that wasn't
Speaker 1: widely known anyway. But for family, it felt like a betrayal,
Speaker 1: Like it felt like we were I was telling the secrets,
Speaker 1: and that's indicative of everybody, because everyone else it is
Speaker 1: a reveal. For my story, it was not a reveal,
Speaker 1: but my family still thought it felt like a reveal.
Speaker 1: Because growing up in a political family, people would attack
Speaker 1: my family based upon experiences with alcoholism and addiction and
Speaker 1: so forth, and so it became a very sensitive subject.
Speaker 1: And of course these attacks were predicated on the idea
Speaker 1: that there was some sign of moral failing. Right, no
Speaker 1: one could if you wanted to look up post traumatic
Speaker 1: stress in the dictionary. You know, one of the examples
Speaker 1: would be my dad, you know, lost to his brothers
Speaker 1: to assassination. Many Trump events. We're just starting to learn
Speaker 1: about all of this stuff. This is no one, as
Speaker 1: Amy says with about her students, gets up and acts out.
Speaker 1: They just don't have the tools to know how to
Speaker 1: manage their emotions their feelings. In my journey as an advocate,
Speaker 1: I got a chance to rededicate the John F. Kennedy's
Speaker 1: Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where they
Speaker 1: train all the Green Berets. And they told me there
Speaker 1: because they saw that I was a mental health guy.
Speaker 1: They said, mister Kennedy, we have more mental health for
Speaker 1: our Green Berets than any other branch of the Service.
Speaker 1: And I said to myself, these Green Berets don't need
Speaker 1: mental health. They're so strong. They jump out of airplanes,
Speaker 1: they swim under the water for five miles without breathing,
Speaker 1: you know, they hit the beach, they speak six languages,
Speaker 1: they take out their target, they're reading to their kids
Speaker 1: by dinner time. I mean, these these people don't And
Speaker 1: he said, no, no, we look at mental health as
Speaker 1: a four multiplier. And I love that because what it
Speaker 1: basically says, if the Green Berets, who are the sharpest, strongest,
Speaker 1: they all invest in their own mental health. Why because
Speaker 1: if they're on a mission, they have to. They can't
Speaker 1: have any intrusive thoughts. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: characterizes illnesses is you kind of have the inability to
Speaker 1: have insight. For one, that's the common characteristic. You don't
Speaker 1: know how bad you really are, but you also have
Speaker 1: these intrusive thoughts, and the Green Berets just they train
Speaker 1: on how to mitigate that, because if you have an
Speaker 1: intrusive thought when you're supposed to have eyes on your six,
Speaker 1: you know, your teammates and a mission, it could be
Speaker 1: the difference between life or death. But I love the
Speaker 1: idea that we all could maximize our own mental health
Speaker 1: because that way we make it something that everybody can
Speaker 1: do better by.
Speaker 4: Amy Patrick, thank you for being so vulnerable with us,
Speaker 4: for sharing your story to make sure people don't suffer
Speaker 4: in silence, to break through stigma, to invite others to share,
Speaker 4: to create the conversation you have today, and then your
Speaker 4: incredible advocacy on mental health that you have done for
Speaker 4: both of your lifetimes. You know, Patrick and Amy were
Speaker 4: grateful for you joining us today from the Lake Nona
Speaker 4: Impact Forum at the KPMG Lake House in Orlando's Lake
Speaker 4: Nona community. We're so grateful for you living your legacy
Speaker 4: every single day and for showing us what change is
Speaker 4: possible when we come together.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you for joining us. If you enjoy
Speaker 3: today's conversation, subscribe, share, and follow us at my Legacy
Speaker 3: Movement on social media. New episodes drop every Tuesday, with
Speaker 3: bonus content every Thursday. At its core, this podcast honors
Speaker 3: doctor King's vision of the beloved community and the power
Speaker 3: of connection. A Legacy Plus Studio production distribute it by
Speaker 3: iHeartMedia creator and executive producers is Heyward co executive producer
Speaker 3: Lisa Lyle. Listen on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you
Speaker 3: get your podcasts. Until next time, may you find inspiration
Speaker 3: to live your legacy.