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December 6, 2018

Rosemary Kennedy: A Life Stolen by Mental Illness and Her Family

When Rosemary Kennedy was enrolled into Kindergarten in 1924, her teachers labeled her as “deficient.” Rose and Joe Kennedy, her parents of high status and education, heard this and were taken aback. You see, the Kennedys had five children and one on the way, and not once had this term been brought up before. For years, little Rosemary struggled to keep up with her classmates. Each day after school, her mother would subject her to several additional hours of study in the hopes of giving her the most opportunity for achievement. However, Rosemary was still held back from progressing to the next grade level at least three times during her education.1

After moving Rosemary from school to school, her mother felt defeated. In her growing years, the 1920s through the 1930s, the education system was not advanced enough to have a standardized curriculum or specialized teaching styles for those with learning deficits.2 Each school taught what they were comfortable with, and if the students could not conform, they had little chance to ever be successful. As Rose saw her daughter struggle, she decided to visit the best doctors available to her.

During one particular consultation, Rose was asked to remember the day of Rosemary’s birth. The pregnancy itself was not out of the ordinary, as Rose had two children before. However, when it came time to give birth, the obstetrician who was to deliver the baby was several hours late. It was during the height of the flu season, and before he could make the house call, he had several other patients to tend to. During those excruciating hours, Rose’s nurse was forced to hold the baby’s head in the birthing canal, which meant that the baby was receiving little to no oxygen. The reason the nurse had to prevent the baby from coming out is that her license only allowed her to help the doctor deliver, and do nothing if a doctor was not present. She also could not offer Rose any form of anesthetic. The effects of that night was the most obvious reason for Rosemary’s hardships.3

Rosemary at 15 years old | Courtesy of Bancroft Press

In the 1930s, Joe Kennedy and his family caught the public’s eye more frequently than ever, their social lives often making debuts in the front pages of national and international newspapers. Joe had a successful political career, and Rose always made motherhood seem effortless.4 Rose’s modern interpretation of being a hardworking mother of eight children made them celebrities. In 1938, Joe was given the role of United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. He presented Rosemary and her younger sister Kathleen to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Rosemary, finally allowed in the limelight, overshadowed her sister in beauty, and men began to take notice of her. According to the papers, her body was voluptuous and her face projected a happy and innocent light. She seemed like a young girl who was primed and prepped for marriage, and the most eligible bachelorette of the Kennedy daughters.

Even though Rosemary was handicapped, puberty and teen angst made her parents extremely uneasy. She would lash out in anger towards her family when she didn’t get her way, and she would sneak out of her boarding school in the middle of the night. Her inability to communicate her frustrations efficiently led her to do things that her family simply could not approve of, especially because everything would eventually make its way into the papers. Rose would try her best to watch Rosemary with a keen eye, but Joe was uneasy that the public would find out about Rosemary’s disability. Even close family friends had no idea that Rosemary had learning deficits.5 They hid her away as much as possible, claiming that she was a home-body, and extremely shy. Her own siblings didn’t fully understand the extent of her disability either.

It goes without saying that the times were not understanding of disabilities of any kind. There was a lack of research, little empathy, and no opportunities for the disabled, and Joe was not about to lose grip of his success. If the public were to find out about Rosemary, they might think lowly of him and of his own ability to perform as a person of political power. Without consulting Rose, he started to ask for help from surgeons in the area. Two particular neurosurgeons, James W. Watts and his partner Walter Freeman, advised Joe Kennedy that the only chance for Rosemary to act accordingly was for them to perform a lobotomy on her. Both doctors were advocates for this new form of psychosurgery, because they were the ones to standardize and popularize it in the US.6

Example of a Lobotomy. Courtesy of New England Journal of Medicine.

The method in which a lobotomy is performed starts by making an incision in the skull while the patient is awake, then one inserts a tool into the frontal lobe of the brain and move it in several directions, only stopping when the patient became unresponsive. The intended result is to help the mentally ill become easier to control.7 They would have less self-awareness, slower responses, and dull emotional range. Even though the surgery often resulted in effects much worse than this, the lobotomy was popular for almost twenty years.

After listening to the sureness of the doctors, Joe decided that a lobotomy was the best thing that he could do for Rosemary. Of course, he didn’t understand any major risks, nor had he heard of any stories of bad results. And so without consulting his wife or even Rosemary for that matter, Joe brought Rosemary to her “appointment.”8 Rosemary never knew that one day would be her last as a free young woman, because when she came out of her surgery, Rosemary Kennedy became the poster child for a botched lobotomy. She woke up with the mental capacity of a two year old, unable to speak or care for herself. And so, the tragedy of the secret Kennedy became a tale that people forgot about, but it provides a scary truth on the treatment of the mentally ill in her time.

After the lobotomy, Rosemary spent several years in a psychiatric hospital, un-visited by family or friends.9 Her condition never improved, and she required 24/7 care to eat, bathe, go to the restroom, and walk.10 We must realize that this is the case for the daughter of an internationally known wealthy politician and socialite. What can we say about the mistreatment, misdiagnosis, and misrepresentation of all US citizens who cannot speak up for themselves?

Left to Right: Sister Kathleen, Mother Rose, Rosemary | Courtesy of Bancroft Press

Even in present time, unorthodox and unwarranted procedures such as shock-conversion therapy are legal to do harm to innocent people in the process. Mental afflictions should be treated, and they should be researched in the same way as medical afflictions. The stigma against mental illness is not only instilled by the general population, but shows just as bad in legislation as well. According to the National Center for Health Statistics in 2016, suicide is at an all time high, yet prevention is not.11

Since Rosemary’s operation, her siblings have been keen to donate time and money to foundations built to represent the disabled, and her sister Eunice founded the Special Olympics.12 Rosemary went on to live a long life and died of natural causes at the age of 86. However, her “life” ended at the tender age of 23, without her permission. Rosemary is one of millions that suffered similarly, but it is a hope that her story will be heard and not hidden for the remainder of history.

  1. Kate Larson, The Hidden Kennedy Daughter (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), 176, 180,187.
  2. Kate Larson, The Hidden Kennedy Daughter (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), 225.
  3. Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff, The Missing Kennedy: Rosemary Kennedy and the Secret Bonds of Four Women (Baltimore: Bancroft Press, 2015), section 1-11.
  4. Lisa Guardarini, Rose Kennedy: The Life and Times of a Political Matriarch (Illinois: Algonquin P.L, 2013), 87.
  5. Kate Larson, The Hidden Kennedy Daughter (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), 76-80.
  6. Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff, The Missing Kennedy: Rosemary Kennedy and the Secret Bonds of Four Women (Baltimore: Bancroft Press, 2015), section 60-63, 68-70.
  7. Robert Whitaker, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (New York: Perseus Books Group, 2002), 107, 122, 141.
  8. U.S. Health Policy and Politics: A Documentary History, 2012, s.v. “Kennedy’s Presidential Panel on Mental Retardation,” by Kevin Hillstrom.
  9. New Catholic Encyclopedia Supplement, 2010, s.v. “Kennedy Family,” by Robert L. Fastiggi.
  10. The Gale Encyclopedia of Mental Health, 2008, s.v. “Deinstitutionalization,” by Laurie J. Fundukian.
  11. The Gale Encyclopedia of Mental Health, 2008, s.v. “Deinstitutionalization,” by Laurie J. Fundukian.
  12. “Oldest Kennedy daughter dies: OBITUARY I Mentally challenged woman inspired the Special Olympics,” The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia), January 8, 2005 Saturday. Accessed September 16, 2018. https://advance-lexis.com.blume.stmarytx.edu/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:4F6N-5XG0-TWD4-03BB-00000-00&context=1516831.

Recent Comments

79 comments

  • Michael Leary

    Very interesting article, I do not know a lot about lobotomy, but, I know enough to understand that the lobotomy procedure was practically prohibited at the time and almost no doctors would had performed one. Very interesting how Rosemary Kennedy was not totally handicapped before, but, essentially became handicapped after the procedure and was abandoned by her family for a long period of time.

  • Joshua Garza

    This right here is a good article that I very much so enjoyed reading. It is not only well put together but more importantly is a reflection of how far we as a human species have come in the field of Psychological studies where we were living in a world that deemed people with dyslexia people with a mental illness to actually coming up with methods to help real mental illnesses.

  • Andres Cano

    I think it is unfortunate that a good intention could spiral into something so secretive and taboo. Today I don’t believe that such a procedure would be as controversial today because the new technology we have would allow us to do so in a much safer way, so I feel remorseful that the poor girl had to suffer because her family wanted her to get “better”. I also think that today we would have been a lot more embracing of her illness and that it would have been a lot harder to hide the truth of the procedure. I like to think that human beings are moving in a direction of moral progress, so hopefully no more will experience suffering as Rosemary did.

  • Sharriah Martinez

    This story was extremely interesting. It was so sad that they were truly embarrassed of her. No one wanted to take the time to be patient and learn how she felt and how to help her. . I wonder how rosemary felt about all of this. It was really wrong of the dad to take her to do the procedure without him knowing the full side effects, informing Rosemary’s mother, and most importantly informing Rosemary. I am more than sure he feels very guilty for what happened to her. She could not do anything for herself, no one visited her, she never got to experience life. She lost her life the day she entered the operating room.

  • Octaviano Huron

    Very sad, but intriguing article. It is crazy how people treated others simply because of a learning disability. Rosemary Kennedy had suffered at the hands of her teachers, of her family, and of science. Unfortunately, she had lived in a time where education was not as advanced in providing special education. Rosemary had a family that hid her from the public eye, and even though lobotomies were procedures with catastrophic results, these results were not widespread.

  • Nadia Carrasco

    This was such a sad article to read. Reading this really had me thinking about how you will still see these things happen today. I was not expecting her to survive the lobotomy and turn out the way she did, much less did I expect her to die from it. The writer made sure to point out that her life ended the day she was forced into that operating room, and to me it was tragic. I can not get over how this women was treated and the things she was put through.

  • Maria Garcia

    This article was written so well and so smoothly. I especially like how the writer states that she “died of natural causes at the age of 86. However, her “‘life'” ended at the tender age of 23,”. Disabilities weren’t handled the way that they are in today’s society, and it is truly sad that her father, a very wealthy man, saw no other choice but to get a lobotomy performed on his daughter simply because of her learning deficits. She never got to fully experience life like any normal person. Her father made her disability far worse than what is was.

  • Katherine Wolf

    I remember watching a documentary about the Kennedys and was so sad to learn about Rosemary. I think that it is so shameful that Joseph choose to give his daughter a lobotomy because she couldn’t learn and conform. I am glad that the Kennedy children chose to support special needs charities after what happened to their sister and seemed to try to right their fathers wrong.

  • Samantha Ruvalcaba

    It’s sad that similar procedures take place even today. Reading this sent me through an emotional rollercoaster and I was not expecting her to survive the lobotomy and turn out the way she did, much less did I expect her to die from it, and for a moment I worried that’s where the story was headed. The writer made sure to point out that her autonomous life ended the day she was forced into that operating room, and I couldn’t agree more.

  • Rebeca Escobar

    This story is incredibly sad and devastating. Her parents were so caught up with how they would look to others that they tried so much to hide their daughter’s disability and even went so far to strip her of her freedom. My heart breaks for this beautiful girl who had to endure such a painful process and live with even worse consequences after. Even more heartbreaking is that she barely had anyone visit her during her stay in the psychiatric hospital. I am happy that we have come so far and realized the craziness behind lobotomies. There is nothing better and more healing than hugging those you love regardless if they are mentally/physically disabled.

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