
Profiles in Mental Health Courage
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Narrated by:
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Johnny Heller
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Patrick J. Kennedy
About this listen
One of Harvard Public Health Magazine's Best Public Health Books of the Year
Profiles in Mental Health Courage portrays the dramatic journeys of a diverse group of Americans who have struggled with their mental health. This book offers deeply compelling stories about the bravery and resilience of those living with a variety of mental illnesses and addictions.
Several years ago, Patrick J. Kennedy shared the story of his personal and family challenges with mental illness and addiction—and the nation’s—in his bestselling memoir, A Common Struggle. Now, he and his Common Struggle coauthor, award-winning healthcare journalist Stephen Fried, have crafted this powerful new book sharing the untold stories of others—a special group who agreed to talk 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, former Congressman Kennedy adapts his uncle’s idea to inspire the “mental health courage” it takes for those with these conditions to treat their illnesses, and risk telling their stories to help America face its crisis in our families, our workplaces, our jails, and on our streets. The resounding silence surrounding these illnesses remains persistent, and this book takes an unflinching look at the experience of mental illness and addiction that inspires profound connection, empathy, and action.
In this book, you’ll meet people of all 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, but all sharing experiences and insights we need to better understand. You’ll also meet those trying to help them through—parents, siblings, spouses, therapists, bosses, doctors, and friends who create the extended families needed to support care and wellness.
The personal stories they share with Kennedy and Fried are intimate, sometimes shocking, always revealing. And they are essential listening for caregivers, family members, policymakers, and the general public—just as they are for those who often feel alone in experiencing these challenges themselves.
©2024 Patrick J. Kennedy and Stephen Fried (P)2024 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Patrick J. Kennedy, the former congressman and youngest child of Senator Ted Kennedy, details his personal and political battle with mental illness and addiction, exploring mental health care's history in the country alongside his and every family's private struggles. A Common Struggle weaves together Kennedy's private and professional narratives, echoing Kennedy's philosophy that for him, the personal is political and the political personal.
-
-
Personal & educational
- By Diana S. Dawson on 11-03-15
By: Patrick J. Kennedy, and others
-
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- By: John F. Kennedy
- Narrated by: John F. Kennedy Jr., Caroline Kennedy
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- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During 1954-1955, John F. Kennedy, then a US senator, chose eight of his historical colleagues to profile for their acts of astounding integrity in the face of overwhelming opposition. These heroes include John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, and Robert A. Taft. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1957, Profiles in Courage - now reissued, featuring a new introduction by Caroline Kennedy as well as Robert Kennedy's foreword written for the memorial edition of the volume in 1964 - resounds with timeless lessons.
-
-
Abridged
- By Tom R on 01-04-17
By: John F. Kennedy
-
Our Hidden Conversations
- What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity
- By: Michele Norris
- Narrated by: Michele Norris, full cast
- Length: 17 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The prompt seemed simple: Race. Your Story. Six Words. Please Send. The answers, though, have been challenging and complicated. In the twelve years since award-winning journalist Michele Norris first posed that question, over half a million people have submitted their stories to The Race Card Project inbox. The stories are shocking in their depth and candor, spanning the full spectrum of race, ethnicity, identity, and class. Even at just six words, the micro-essays can pack quite a punch, revealing, fear, pain, triumph, and sometimes humor.
-
-
Excellent in every way
- By Deb Evans on 02-21-24
By: Michele Norris
-
The Art of Power
- My Story as America's First Woman Speaker of the House
- By: Nancy Pelosi
- Narrated by: Nancy Pelosi
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When, at age forty-six, Nancy Pelosi, mother of five, asked her youngest daughter if she should run for Congress, Alexandra Pelosi answered: “Mother, get a life!” And so Nancy did, and what a life it has been. In The Art of Power, Pelosi describes for the first time what it takes to make history—not only as the first woman to ascend to the most powerful legislative role in our nation, but to pass laws that would save lives and livelihoods, from the emergency rescue of the economy in 2008 to transforming health care.
-
-
She is a natural at getting her caucus to agree on difficult. Votes
- By Amazon Customer on 08-11-24
By: Nancy Pelosi
-
Burn Book
- A Tech Love Story
- By: Kara Swisher
- Narrated by: Kara Swisher
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Part memoir, part history, Burn Book is a necessary chronicle of tech’s most powerful players. This is the inside story we’ve all been waiting for about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world. When tech titans crowed that they would “move fast and break things,” Kara Swisher was moving faster and breaking news. While covering the explosion of the digital sector in the early 1990s, she developed a long track record of digging up and reporting the facts about this new world order.
-
-
Let me save you 8 hours
- By Momx4 on 02-29-24
By: Kara Swisher
-
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
- Close Encounters with Addiction
- By: Gabor Maté MD
- Narrated by: Daniel Maté
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this timely and profoundly original book, best-selling writer and physician Gabor Maté looks at the epidemic of addictions in our society, tells us why we are so prone to them, and what is needed to liberate ourselves from their hold on our emotions and behaviours.
-
-
Gabor should have been the narrator
- By Stacey on 08-16-19
By: Gabor Maté MD
Critic reviews
“I assumed that nothing in a book of essays about people struggling with their mental health could surprise me. Then I read … Patrick J. Kennedy’s Profiles in Mental Health Courage, written with Stephen Fried … about the complicated relationship between addiction and mental health … a former congressman with his own history of substance abuse and bipolar disorder, [he] introduces readers introduces readers to … people living with mental illness who are not only functioning, but helping others.”—Judith Newman, New York Times Book Review
"Profiles in Mental Health Courage is a must read. I could not put it down. The stories of real families dealing with the messy, awful impacts of mental health and substance use are raw and unvarnished. It will make you want to do something about it.”—Kate Snow, NBC
“A heartrending portrait of mental illness and substance abuse disorder in America… [Patrick J. Kennedy and Stephen Fried] fulfill their mission to improve visibility for those struggling to get help, and take a step toward rectifying the widespread lack of understanding about mental illnesses and substance disorders, which they argue is ‘as big an epidemic as the diseases themselves’…a revealing window into an important and timely issue.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Importance of mental health.
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Hearing the truth about loss and that it's ok to not be okay. As long as you do something with it.
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Thank you!
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A book that needed to be written
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Had little to do with mental health
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