American Psychosis: How the Federal Government

Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System

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 American Psychosis
How the Federal Government Destroyed
the Mental Illness Treatment System

E. Fuller Torrey, MD

3
 3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Torrey, E. Fuller (Edwin Fuller), 1937-

American psychosis : how the federal government destroyed the mental illness treatment system /
E. Fuller Torrey, MD.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–998871–6
1. Mentally ill—Care—United States—History. 2. Mentally ill—Services for—United
States. 3. Mental health policy—United States. 4. Mental health services—United
States—Evaluation. I. Title.
RC443.T66 2014
362.1968900973—dc23
2013017565

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
 For the ineffable women of my life
—Barbara, Martha, Torrey, and Olivia

All royalties have been assigned to the Treatment Advocacy Center

in Arlington, Virginia.
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 contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi

1. Joe Kennedy: A Man with Problems 1

2. Robert Felix: A Man with Plans 17

3. The Birth of the Federal Mental Health Program: 1960–1963 37

4. The Short, Unhappy Life of the Federal Mental Health Program: 1964–1970 61

5. The Death of the Federal Mental Health Program: 1971–1980 75

6. The Perfect Storm: 1981–1999 93

7. Dimensions of the Present Disaster: 2000–2013 115

8. Solutions: What Have We Learned and What Should We Do? 139

Notes 169
Index 195
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 preface

I don’t know why other people write books, but for me, it is a selfish enterprise. I write
to answer questions that are bothering me. For many years I have been appalled to
watch the unfolding disaster of services for people with serious mental illnesses. The
fact that my sister suffered from severe schizophrenia has certainly accounted for part
of my interest. Year after year, I observed the consequences as public mental hospitals
were being emptied. It was like watching the effects of a tsunami or a Category 5 hurri-
cane in slow motion; although I knew what would happen next, I have re-run the tape
in my mind, again and again.
I worked at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) from 1970 to 1976, in
the midst of the events described herein. Bertram Brown, then NIMH director, was
my supervisor. Although I had no formal responsibilities for the federal community
mental health centers program, I interested myself in it and visited some centers. Thus,
I personally was acquainted with many of the players who were responsible for the pro-
gram. With few exceptions, these people were intelligent, public-spirited, well-mean-
ing, and dedicated individuals. That fact elicited the question that bothered me: How
could so many well-meaning professionals have been so wrong and been complicit in
creating such a disaster? This book attempts to answer that question.
I do not pretend to be a dispassionate observer. During my years of working
in a public psychiatric hospital, I observed with increasing anger the effects on my
patients of inadequate community services. I continue to become choleric when I read
accounts like that of Charles Furry, diagnosed with schizophrenia and Lou Gehrig’s
disease, living by himself in suburban Virginia and dependent on Medicaid-funded
home health aides:

When we removed his socks maggots fell out. Hundreds fell out initially. There
were some between his toes and under his skin. Furry’s legs were swollen and
his shirt was drenched in drool.1

This is not what President Kennedy had in mind 50 years ago when he promised that
for people like Mr. Furry “reliance on the cold mercy of custodial isolation will be sup-
planted by the open warmth of community concern and capability.”2 The home health
aides responsible for Mr. Furry’s care were employed by Sierra Health Services, Inc., a
 x preface

highly profitable private company. We should not allow human beings to be treated in
this manner if we claim to be truly civilized.
Having lived in the nation’s capital for most of my adult life, I have also been
intrigued by the federal angle to this story. Here is a case study of a federal policy that
went astray. In most such cases, there is a course correction. Yet in this case, there has
been none, even now, a half-century later. Why is that? Each day after work, thousands
of government workers gather over drinks to discuss their Grand Idea for solving one
national problem or another. Like Robert Felix, the first director of the NIMH, they
wait for the stars to align and the approval of their supervisors to implement their
Grand Idea. This is thus also a cautionary tale.
If we are to correct our errors, then it is necessary to understand how we got where
we are. We have made many mistakes in how we care for the most vulnerable among
us and, alarmingly, other countries such as Canada and Britain are following us down
this path. What can we learn from the past?
 acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the generous donation of many
people’s time. Special thanks go to Bertram S. Brown, who unhesitatingly shared his
ideas and memories for a book that he knew would not be flattering, and to Henry
Foley, who retrieved his valuable 1972 interview tapes from his garage shelf and gen-
erously shared them. Others who kindly responded to my inquiries include Robert
Atwell, Jerry Dincin, Matthew Dumont, Sister Ann Dyer, Rashi Fein, Mary Herbert,
Robert Keisling, Anthony Lehman, Bentson McFarland, Frank Ochberg, Lucy
Ozarin, Anthony Panzetta, Roger Peele, Steven Sharfstein, Alan Stone, John Talbott,
and Claudwell Thomas. Archivists and librarians are a writer’s best friends and I am
specifically indebted to Tracy Holt at NIMH; Doug Atkins at the National Library of
Medicine; Gary McMillan at the American Psychiatric Association; Amy Lutzke at the
Fort Atkinson Public Library; and Eric Robinson at the New York Historical Society.
Faith Dickerson, Doris Fuller, Jeffrey Geller, Stephen Hersh, D. J. Jaffe, and Robert
Taylor read portions of the text and contributed valuable comments. My best reader,
as always, was Barbara Torrey, who contributed not only suggestions but everything
else that makes writing a book possible. Sarah Harrington and Andrea Zekus at Oxford
University Press made the revisions and publication of this book hassle-free, and it
has been a great pleasure to work with them. Melissa Bolla is an excellent research
assistant, and Judy Miller provided invaluable editorial and administrative assistance
once again.
In addition to the above, I gratefully acknowledge the following:

• Chloe Raub, Special Collections Research Center, George Washington University,

for permission to use the picture of Dr. Walter Freeman
• Michael Gorman, for permission to use the picture of his father
• Keith Ablow, MD, for permission to quote him from Fox News
• The San Francisco Chronicle, for permission to quote from “Homeless by the Bay”
• The American Psychiatric Association, for permission to quote from the American
Journal of Psychiatry and Hospital and Community Psychiatry
• Mental Health America, for permission to quote from Mental Hygiene
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American Psychosis
This page intentionally left blank
 1
joe kennedy: a man with problems

September 1, 1939: Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy was preoccupied with two deeply
distressing problems. The first had become apparent at dawn that day, when German
tanks rolled into Poland. This was a clear invitation for Britain to declare war, as Britain
had publicly guaranteed Poland’s independence. Two days later Parliament obliged, and
Kennedy immediately telephoned the president. According to Michael Beschloss’s his-
tory Kennedy and Roosevelt, “Roosevelt could barely recognize the choked voice from
across the Atlantic. . . . [He] tried to comfort his old ally, but the voice was inconsolable.
Over and over Kennedy cried, ‘It’s the end of the world . . . the end of everything . . .’ ”1
Joe Kennedy knew that “everything” included his own aspirations to run for presi-
dent in 1940. Anticipating that Roosevelt would not run for a third term, Kennedy
had spent the previous 2 years carefully positioning himself. A recent poll had ranked
Kennedy fifth among possible Democratic nominees, and some pundits claimed
that Roosevelt had appointed him as ambassador to Britain to remove him from the
American scene. In London, Kennedy had joined Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
as a major voice for the appeasement of Hitler, even as the Nazis were sweeping over
Austria and Czechoslovakia. According to Beschloss, “both Kennedy and Chamberlain
interpreted Hitler’s eastward expansionism as a bid mainly for resources and markets.”
Indeed, just 1 week prior to the German invasion of Poland, Kennedy had assured
Roosevelt that Hitler had limited ambitions and that once these had been achieved
Hitler would “go back to peaceful pursuits and become an artist, which is what he
wanted to be.” As Kennedy was painfully aware, Hitler’s signing of a nonaggression
pact with the Soviet Union and his invasion of Poland were not the acts of an artist.2

***

On that September morning, as his own political ambitions were being crushed beneath
the treads of Hitler’s tanks, Kennedy was also preoccupied with another problem, one
that was profoundly personal. The problem was his eldest daughter, Rosemary, who
would turn 21 years old in 2 weeks. Recently, he had received disturbing reports that
something was wrong with her, something more than the mild mental retardation she
had experienced since birth. The retardation had been a source of great distress for the

1
 2 american psychosis

family, especially for Joe, who expected his children to be strong and accomplished,
like himself. Few people knew of Rosemary’s mild retardation, because superficially
she looked normal and the family fiercely protected her. As Rosemary grew older, they
placed her in convents, where, thanks to Joe Kennedy’s bounteous bestowments on the
church’s hierarchy, they could be assured that she would be kept safe and out of view.
At the time, Rosemary was living in a convent in Hertfordshire, northwest of
London. The convent trained Montessori primary school teachers, and Rosemary
read to the children each afternoon. It was a highly structured environment, in addi-
tion to which Rosemary had a full-time female companion, hired by the Kennedys, to
watch over her. In recent weeks, however, Rosemary had been exhibiting increasingly
severe mood swings and had to be admonished to not be “fierce” with the children. Her
recent letters had included “eerie ellipses,” suggestive of an emerging thought disorder.
Disturbed by the reports he was receiving from the convent, Joe consulted privately
with London’s leading child development specialists. He was perplexed and infuriated
by what he was being told; mental retardation had been a family disgrace, but mental
illness would be a debacle. Such things could not be allowed in the Kennedy family.3
With war now a certainty, Joe Kennedy would remain in London as ambassador,
but it was necessary to send his wife, Rose, and the children—Jack, Kathleen, Eunice,
Pat, Bobby, Jean, and Teddy—back to the States. Joe Jr. was already there, at Harvard
Law School. That left only Rosemary, and it was decided to leave her at the convent
in Hertfordshire; she was happy there, and it was far from the eyes of the American
press. Two months later, reporters from the Boston Globe realized that Rosemary
had been the only Kennedy child left behind in England and wrote to her, asking for
an interview. Joe Kennedy’s aide penned a reply for Rosemary, which she dutifully
copied. She said that she “thought it [her] duty to remain behind with my Father.”
Further, Rosemary implied that she had responsibilities that necessitated her staying
in England. “For some time past, I have been studying the well known psychological
method of Dr. Maria Montessori and I got my degree in teaching last year. Although
it has been very hard work, I have enjoyed it immensely and I have made many good
friends.” The reporters were apparently satisfied and did not pursue the matter further.4

ROSEMARY’S BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT

Rosemary had been born on September 13, 1918, at the Kennedy home in Boston. Jack
had been born 15 months earlier; Rosemary and Jack were thus closer in age than any
other Kennedy children. Joe Jr., the first of the nine Kennedy children, had been born
3 years earlier. As the eldest Kennedy daughter, Rosemary was christened Rose Marie
after her mother; the family called her Rosie, but the rest of the world would know her
as Rosemary (Figure 1.1).
 3 Kennedy: A Man With Problems

fig 1.1 Joseph Jr. (left), Rosemary (center), and Jack (left) as young children. Rosemary was born less
than 16 months after Jack and the two were closer in age than any other of the Kennedy children. Jack
and Joe Jr. were very protective of their younger sister. (AP Photo)

It was an inauspicious time to be born in Boston. Two weeks earlier, cases of influ-
enza had been diagnosed among military personnel awaiting transportation to Europe.
The disease spread quickly across Boston, and by September 11 there had already been
35 deaths. The epidemic was unusual in its predilection for young adults, its lethality,
and its propensity to cause severe psychiatric symptoms as it spread to the victim’s
brain. At the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, Karl Menninger, who had just graduated
from Harvard Medical School, was making notes on 80 patients who had been admit-
ted between September 15 and December 15 with influenza and symptoms of psycho-
sis. Menninger would subsequently publish five professional papers on these cases,
thereby launching his psychiatric career.5
Probably of greater consequence for Rosemary was the fact that a milder wave
of influenza had passed through Boston the previous spring. According to Alfred
Crosby’s history of the epidemic, “flu had been nearly omnipresent in March and April.”
This was when Rose Kennedy was in the third and fourth months of her pregnancy.
Although it was not known at the time, a later study reported that “maternal exposure
to influenza at approximately the third to fourth month of gestation may be a risk fac-
tor for developing mental handicap.” Another study showed that the intelligence scores
 4 american psychosis

of individuals who had been in their first trimester of development in utero during
an influenza epidemic were lower than the scores of individuals born at other times.
Even more alarming was a study showing that individuals who had been in utero in
mid-pregnancy during an influenza epidemic had an increased chance of being later
diagnosed with schizophrenia. This specter would later haunt the Kennedy family. 6
Rosemary was said to have been “a very pretty baby” but “cried less” than her broth-
ers had and did “not seem to have the vitality and energy” her brothers had shown. She
was not as well coordinated, was unable to manage her baby spoon, and later could
not steer a sled down the hill in winter or handle the oars of a rowboat in summer. She
tried to join in the games of her siblings and their friends, but “there were many games
and activities in which she didn’t participate” and often was remembered as being just
“part of the background.”7
By the end of kindergarten, it was clear that something was seriously wrong with
Rosemary when she was not passed to the first grade. Rose Kennedy consulted the
head of the psychology department at Harvard, the first of many such consultations.
The experts were unanimous in their opinion: Rosemary was mildly retarded. Terms
used for such people in the 1920s included “feebleminded” and “moron.” The early
1920s was the peak of the eugenics craze; male morons were said to have a high pro-
clivity toward criminality, and female morons, toward prostitution.8
Joe and Rose Kennedy determined to prove the experts wrong. From primary
school onward, Rosemary was sent to convent schools and provided with special
tutors. For example, at the Sacred Heart Convent in Providence, Rosemary was
taught in a classroom by herself, “set down before two nuns and another special
teacher, Miss Newton, who worked with her all day long.” The Kennedys also “hired
a special governess or nurse with whom Rosemary lived part of the time.” When
Rosemary was at home, Rose Kennedy spent hours with her on the tennis court,
“methodically hitting the ball back and forth to her” and helping her “to write bet-
ter, to spell, and to count.” The intense work helped Rosemary eventually achieve
a fourth grade level in math and a fifth grade level in English, but she could go
no farther. To those outside the family, the Kennedys pretended that Rosemary
was normal. In The Kennedy Women, Laurence Leamer claimed that “even cousins
and other relatives beyond the immediate family did not know about Rosemary’s
condition.”9
Among the Kennedy siblings, Eunice, almost 3 years younger, took a special inter-
est in her older sister. Eunice was the most religious of the five Kennedy girls, and
“many thought that Eunice would one day become a nun.” She “made a special point
of spending time with Rosemary . . . integrating her into their lives.” According to one
family friend, “Eunice seemed to develop very early on a sense of special responsibil-
ity for Rosemary as if Rosemary were her child instead of her sister.” Ted Kennedy
 5 Kennedy: A Man With Problems

later recalled, “Eunice reached out to make sure that Rosemary was included in all
activities—whether it was Dodge Ball or Duck Duck Goose. . . . Eunice was the one who
ensured that Rosemary would have her fair share of successes.” As teenagers the two
sisters became close, traveling in Europe together in the summer of 1935. As Eunice
later recalled: “We went on boat trips in Holland, climbed mountains in Switzerland,
went rowing on Lake Lucerne. . . . Rose[mary] could do all those things—rowing,
climbing—as well or better than I. She could walk faster and longer distances than
I could. And she was fun to be with.” Like her mother, Eunice was determined to make
Rosemary seem as normal as possible.10
Responsibility for protecting Rosemary also fell to her older brothers, Joe Jr.
and Jack, who was closest to her in age. This was especially true as she matured.
She was described as “an immensely pretty woman,” according to some observers
the most attractive of all the Kennedy sisters, and amply endowed. This, combined
with her sweet demeanor and natural reticence, attracted young men, and it fell to
Joe Jr. and Jack to warn them off. In summers they would escort her to dances at
the Hyannis Yacht Club. As described in The Kennedy Women, “Jack put his name
at the top of his sister’s dance card and went around the room, getting his friends
to help fill out the rest of the card.” When writing to her from college, Jack’s letters
were described as “sensitive and warm,” and a biographer described him as being
“as generous toward his sister as any of the children.” Rosemary’s problems were
thus indelibly etched upon Jack Kennedy’s conscience, as would later become clear
when he assumed the presidency.11
During their first year in London, the Kennedys had continued to include Rosemary
in all family social activities. On May 11, 1938, Kathleen, age 18 years, and Rosemary,
age 19 years, were presented to King George and Queen Elizabeth in a formal ceremony
at Buckingham Palace. A few weeks later, Rose held a coming-out party for Kathleen
and Rosemary, complete with 300 guests and an embassy official as Rosemary’s escort.
In September, Rosemary joined Eunice, Pat, Bobby, and their governess for a 2-week
tour of Scotland and Ireland. Then, in December, Rosemary joined the family for a
ski holiday at St. Moritz. According to The Kennedy Women, “Rose’s main concern at
St. Moritz was her eldest daughter . . . a picturesque young woman, a snow princess
with flushed cheeks . . . [who] was attracting the attention of young men who took
her cryptic silences and deliberate speech as feminine demureness.” In March 1939,
Rosemary joined her family to attend the investiture of Pope Pius XII in Rome, and
on May 4, Rosemary was in attendance at the dinner given by the Kennedys for the
King and Queen prior to the royal visit to the United States. Thus, until mid-1939,
when she was almost 21 years old, Rosemary was very much part of the Kennedy
family, protected by them and apparently functioning at a socially appropriate level
(Figures 1.2 and 1.3).12
 6 american psychosis

fig 1.2 Rosemary (right), with sister Kathleen and their mother Rose, arriving at Buckingham
Palace to be presented to the Queen in June, 1938. Rosemary was mildly retarded but 1 year later she
developed the initial symptoms of what became a severe mental illness. (Copyright Bettmann/Corbis/
AP Images)

A KENNEDY PROBLEM

Rosemary’s status within the family changed during the summer of 1939, as the earliest
symptoms of her mental illness became manifest. She remained in England when all
of her family, except her father, returned to the United States in September. And when

fig 1.3 Rosemary and her father in London in 1938. (Copyright Bettmann/Corbis/AP Images)
 7 Kennedy: A Man With Problems

Joe Kennedy traveled to the States on November 29 to join his family for Christmas,
Rosemary remained at the Hertfordshire convent. The people who were increasingly
in charge of Rosemary’s life were Edward M. Moore and his wife, Mary. Moore had
begun working for Joe Kennedy in 1915. He was not only Kennedy’s most trusted assis-
tant but also Rosemary’s godfather and the namesake of the youngest of the Kennedy
children, Edward (Ted) Moore Kennedy. During the 3 months when Joe Kennedy
was absent from England, from December 1939 through February 1940, the Moores
remained there and looked after Rosemary’s needs. The distance between Rosemary
and her family at that point can be measured by the fact that she only learned of her
father’s return to England when she read about it in the newspaper.13
Throughout the spring of 1940, the Nazis marched inexorably across Europe.
Norway and Denmark fell, then Belgium and the Netherlands. It seemed just a mat-
ter of time before German bombs would fall on England, and Joe Kennedy predicted
that the country would fall by July. Having the Nazis overrun England and capture
Rosemary was not a welcome idea, so finally, in May of 1940, the Moores escorted
Rosemary back to the States by way of Lisbon. Reporters were told that she had
remained in England “to continue her art studies” (Figure 1.4).14

fig 1.4 Rosemary, Jack, and younger sister Jean in 1940, shortly after Rosemary had returned from
England. At that time, she had begun showing symptoms of mental illness, in addition to her mild
mental retardation. (AP Photo)
 8 american psychosis

Joe Kennedy remained in London for five additional months, returning on October
22, just prior to the election. Wendell Wilkie, the Republican nominee, was proving
to be a tougher foe than Roosevelt had anticipated. Kennedy represented a signifi-
cant block of American voters who wanted American to stay out of Europe’s war, so
Roosevelt strongly urged him to publicly endorse his reelection. Although Kennedy
suspected that Roosevelt would bring America into the war if given the chance, he
endorsed him. When later asked why he had done so, Kennedy replied: “I simply made
a deal with Roosevelt. We agreed that if I endorsed him for President in 1940, then he
would support my son Joe for governor of Massachusetts in 1942.” Although he had
not yet finished law school, Joe Jr. was regarded as the most promising of the Kennedy
children and “had made no secret of his ultimate intention to become president of
the United States.” Because Joe Sr.’s own political career was by then “in ruins,” he was
ready to pass his mantle of aspiration to his oldest son. As historian Alonzo Hamby
noted, “he expected his children to achieve his frustrated ambitions for social accep-
tance and political recognition and deliberately guided them along that path.”15
What limited information is available suggests that things did not go well for
Rosemary after she returned from England. According to Peter Collier and David
Horowitz’s The Kennedys, “the basic skills she had labored so hard to master in her
special schools were deteriorating.” She lived with the Moores, at a convent in Boston,
at a “special camp” in Massachusetts, and with her family for various periods. One
Kennedy guest recalled that “it was embarrassing to be around Rosemary. . . . She
would behave in strange ways at the table. . . . She would appear there standing in her
nightgown when everyone else was moving ahead so rapidly.” For one dinner party,
Rose “didn’t feel comfortable having Rosemary around” and asked her governess to
take her to her home for the weekend.16
By the summer of 1941, Rosemary’s behavior had become increasingly alarming.
According to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, Rosemary’s
“customary good nature had given way to tantrums, rages and violent behavior. Pacing
up and down the halls of her home, she was like a wild animal, given to screaming,
cursing, and thrashing out at anyone who tried to thwart her will.” For no apparent rea-
son, “she would erupt in an inexplicable fury, the rage pouring out of her like a tempest
from a cloudless sky.” One significant episode that summer involved her 78-year-old
grandfather, John F. Fitzgerald. “Rosemary, who was sitting on the porch at Hyannis,
suddenly attacked Honey Fitz, hitting and kicking her tiny, white-haired grandfather
until she was pulled away.” Fitzgerald had been a three-term member of Congress and
three-term mayor of Boston and was still regarded as one of the most powerful men
in the city.17
Shortly after the attack on her grandfather, Rosemary was sent to live at
St. Gertrude’s School for Arts and Crafts, one of the first schools in the United States
 9 Kennedy: A Man With Problems

offering academic training for retarded children. It was part of a Benedictine convent
in northeast Washington, D.C., located on Sargent Road, adjacent to the campus of
Catholic University. Rosemary’s sister Kathleen had already moved to Washington in
August to take a job with the Washington Times-Herald. In October, Jack also moved to
Washington to work at the Office of Naval Intelligence and lived at Dorchester House,
on 16th Street. Kathleen and Jack could both, therefore, keep an eye on their increas-
ingly unpredictable sibling.
What had become painfully clear was that something had to be done. Joe and Rose
were afraid that their daughter would become pregnant, a potentially disgraceful situ-
ation for a Catholic family with political ambitions in an era when abortions were
not a realistic option. Their fears only increased when Rosemary figured out how to
escape from the convent and wander the streets of northeast Washington at night. In
Goodwin’s The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, Ann Gargan, Rosemary’s cousin on her
mother’s side, recalled the Kennedy dilemma:

She was the most beautiful of all the Kennedys. . . . She had the body of a twenty-
one-year-old yearning for fulfillment with the mentality of a four-year-old. She
was in a convent in Washington at the time, and many nights the school would
call to say she was missing, only to find her out walking the streets at 2 a.m. Can
you imagine what it must have been like to know your daughter was walking the
streets in the darkness of the night, the perfect prey for an unsuspecting male?

In The Kennedy Women, Laurence Leamer added that “the nuns would find her wan-
dering in the streets, her story disconnected and vague, and they would bring her back
to the convent, ask her to bathe, and warn her never again to walk into those nighttime
streets. Soon she would be off again. . . . The family worried there were men who wanted
her and men she may have wanted. . . . The family feared that Rosemary had lost all con-
trol. . . . They feared that she was going out into the streets to do what Kathleen called
‘the thing the priest says not to do.’ ” Edward Shorter, who had access to the Kennedy
archives for his book on them, claims that “apparently in the course of these wander-
ings [Rosemary] was having sexual contact with men.”18
It is not possible to give a definitive diagnosis of Rosemary’s illness without access
to her files. The Kennedy Foundation has kept them closed and rejected applications
to view them, including my own request in October 2010, despite the fact that all the
principals had died. According to FBI files, Joseph Kennedy’s attorney confirmed that
Rosemary had suffered from a “mental illness” for “many years.” In her autobiography,
Rose Kennedy herself acknowledged that “there were other factors at work besides
retardation” and added: “A neurological disturbance or disease of some sort seemingly
had overtaken her, and it was becoming progressively worse.” Dr. Bertram S. Brown,