Health

Listening to Saoirse Kennedy Hill

RFK’s granddaughter’s open letter schools us in responding to mental illness.

Posted August 5, 2019

In 2016, Saoirse Kennedy Hill wrote a haunting open letter in her school newspaper, the Deerfield Scroll.

Kennedy Hill, then a senior at the prestigious private school Deerfield Academy, shared that when she returned from a leave of absence, having taken time off to manage her mental health, it was only her friends who knew what she had been through. Teachers and other students thought that she had left “because of an eating disorder, or that I had been bullied.” That didn’t bother her.

What concerned her was that she had been through something significant, and it seemed that no one knew. That meant that, to her, it wasn’t clear that others could help her make the transition back to school less difficult. If administrators had reached out to her, she said, she would have been open to talking with them about how she would like her story to be shared.

She wrote: “HIPAA was designed to protect patient privacy, yet in my experience, it left me feeling very much alone.”

She offered several suggestions for language teachers and students could use to talk about mental health in a supportive way. These are her words:

If someone says they’re feeling depressed, a good way to respond would be, “What are some other things you’re feeling? What do you think has brought this on?”
If you don’t feel comfortable saying either of those, say, “I don’t understand what you’re going through, but I am here for support.”
Too often, people speak before they think, and that can damage the trust in a relationship. If someone confides in you, try not to say, “It’s all in your mind,” or “lighten up,” or, my personal favorite, “Happiness is a choice.”

She went on to challenge the Deerfield community to come together to talk about mental health issues, to make the community more inclusive and comfortable.

She lived the legacy of her famous grandfather, having a defiant hope, until she couldn’t anymore.

Kennedy Hill died last week. She was 22 years old.

Please consider reading her words or about the work of her cousin Patrick Kennedy, who has focused his advocacy work on mental health after living with addiction and bipolar illness.

At a time when many are pointing out how the Kennedy family has been struck by tragedy, bring forward the spirit of defiant hope and consider what we can do to make life with mental illness easier, in small ways or large.