Tackling Mental Illness and Addiction One Community at a Time

By David Palmer

In his new book,  “A Common Struggle. A personal journey though the past and future of mental illness and addiction,” Patrick Kennedy describes his own harrowing struggle with drugs and alcohol and advocates for more aggressive treatment of both mental illness and addictions through the development of local resources in individual communities. It is a welcome and important addition to the national conversation that is slowly building, and it is one that we at One Day at a Time (ODAT), have modestly pursued for a decade in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Patrick, 60, is the first Kennedy to really talk openly about the mental illness, addictions and tragedies that have plagued him and his family, but he is not the first to propose reforms that would address the nation’s drug problem. Patrick reminds us that when his uncle John F. Kennedy was President, he sponsored the Community Health Act of 1963, which was designed to provide “mental health prevention, diagnosis and treatment services to individuals residing in the community.” President Kennedy was shot on November 22 of that year, and the goals of his initiative stressing individual community involvement were never fully realized. Now Patrick reminds us of the need for community-based, comprehensive solutions providing mental health, addiction, and spiritual resources. He certainly has the credentials.

Patrick is a son of the late U.S. Senator, Ted Kennedy and his former wife, Joan Kennedy. Joan has been in and out of treatment for alcoholism most of her adult life. Patrick believes his father, Ted, a heavy drinker, may have suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) related to the assassination of his two older brothers, John in 1963 and Bobby in 1968. Ted did have a drinking problem and alcohol was implicated in the highly publicized drowning death of Mary Jo Kopechne in a car accident following a party on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 which Ted survived.

The tragic losses in the Kennedy family began in 1940 with the death of his uncle Joe, who was killed in a plane crash early in World War II, and it continued with the Assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. The last, not counting Ted’s natural death in 2009, occurred 15 years ago, when Patrick’s cousin, John, died in a plane crash when the Piper Saratoga he was piloting, plunged into the sea off Martha’s Vineyard killing him, his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren. Some believe there is a family “curse” stemming from patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy’s decision decades ago to institutionalize and subsequently authorize a lobotomy for his daughter Rosemary, who had struggled with mental illness. Many thought the action was extreme and selfishly motivated. In “A Common Struggle,” Patrick Kennedy thoroughly documents his own prodigious struggles with depression, anxiety and addiction, and now, out of office as a Rhode Island Congressman, he pledges to devote his life to promoting better treatment for the mentally ill and addicted.

Up until 1980, I, too, treated my depression and anxiety with alcohol and prescription drugs but with a developing Christian faith and active participation in Alcoholics Anonymous I was able to overcome my addictions, help restore my family and, in a modest way, begin to help others. I founded ODAT, a non-profit company, in 2004, initially in response to the near death of a grandson, Rees Palmer, who was seriously injured and almost died in a drug related automobile accident in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Rees, who was hospitalized following his accident, emerged from a coma proclaiming to be a Christian and talking it up with fellow patients. His stated beliefs, seemingly sincere, were not supported by his actions.

While smoking pot with gang members on the roof of a building, Rees crashed through a skylight and fell four floors. He was badly injured, but he survived, still proclaiming his Christianity and going to church, but continuing to use drugs. He has been in several treatment programs and spent time in a foster home. My son, Rees’s father, nor I, his grandfather, have been able to get to the bottom of what is wrong with his son, Rees, and continue the search. It is within this context that I have begun to reorganize the ODAT model in Little Rock to focus on and more precisely define local problems and solutions. Long term, I, or my successors or imitators can use the Little Rock plan in other communities.

As a first step, I am beginning to identify and recruit an administrative body to define and develop a community alcohol and drug recovery plan for Little Rock rooted in our Christian faith. We have named it “The Roundtable,” evoking, as it does, positive feelings of compassion, steadfastness, courage, honor, chivalry and nobility. The 12^th century roundtable had 12 members, and we will begin with that. We have also been influenced by Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” and by the extraordinarily positive response of our nation’s communities in meeting the challenges of World War II. Members of the proposed “Little Rock Roundtable” will represent Christian churches, hospitals, schools, businesses, prison systems, veterans groups, lawyers, legislators and others. Some will be in recovery from addictions and mental health problems themselves.

Our mission, ultimately, is to reduce if not eliminate drug abuse in every community in America, and we will begin with Little Rock (including North Little Rock) “one day at a time.”

Our approach at the outset is to:

1. Begin recruiting Roundtable members, a process that has just begun.
2. Further define and inventory available resources in Little Rock needed for recovery including medical services, churches, AA and other 12 Step programs, law enforcement and programs for teens, veterans, prison inmates and other vulnerable populations.
3. Survey public opinion (local feelings about addressing the addiction problem and how to solve it) through available data and through polling.
4. Begin to define and develop programs and resources needed for dealing with substance abuse problems.
5. Our emphasis is on an entrepreneurial approach. We encourage local government participation in community programs and are cautious when it comes to federal programs. In Cultural Psychiatry, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, recently wrote, “the funding of mental illness services in the U.S is more thought-disordered than many of the thought-disordered patients it is meant to serve.

“The logical answer, he continued, “is to give the responsibilities and the federal funds currently supporting mental illness services back to the states and hold them accountable.”

To this, I would add, give the money to local communities to develop local programs responding to specific local needs.