McGovern to Receive APA Award, Present Lecture in Chicago
Former Senator George McGovern is this year’s recipient of APA’s Patient Advocacy Award. He will present a lecture at APA’s 2000 annual meeting on Tuesday, May 16, at 11 a.m. at McCormick Place.
Since his daughter’s death in 1994 after a long battle with alcoholism, McGovern has involved himself in a host of activities to focus attention on alcoholism and provide much-needed and wanted information to families. Among these activities was the establishment of the Terry McGovern Foundation, whose primary purpose is to provide education and resources to families dealing with alcoholism and contribute to the public’s knowledge of addiction and recovery. Additional resources are used to assist in fundraising for research and treatment, with a special emphasis on women’s issues and relapse prevention. In addition, the Terry McGovern Foundation has the long-term goal of funding research into alcoholism, with a special emphasis on women’s issues and relapse prevention.
Terry McGovern, who was lauded for her public speaking on behalf of her father when he ran for U.S. president in 1972, had at one time wanted to be a writer. She first suffered from depression in her late teens, losing interest in nature and sports, especially swimming, at which she excelled. She was hospitalized for depression for six months when she was about 19, but her alcoholism was not apparent until after she finished college at age 25. Terry herself, however, felt that the causation also worked in reverse. Her journals referred to her "alcohol-induced depression." Despite the best treatment efforts, she died at the age of 45—drunk and asleep in a snow bank, within hours of being released from an inpatient alcohol detoxification facility.
Senator McGovern came to regret how strictly he had interpreted the advice to use "tough love" with his daughter. He also feared that his political career may have hurt his children since he was often absent when they were teenagers.
Trying to come to grips with his daughter’s disease and subsequent death and any role he may have played, McGovern wrote the moving book Terry: My Daughter’s Life-and-Death Struggle With Alcoholism, which was published in May 1996 by Villard Books.
More information about the Terry McGovern Foundation is posted at the Web site <www.mcgovernfamily.org/>.