ABC’s James Longman shares about his family’s history of mental illness and trauma in a new memoir

ABC News Chief International Correspondent James Longman has brought us stories from all over the world, and now he’s opening up about his own story in his new memoir ‘The Inherited Mind,’ exploring the genetics of mental illness while telling the story of his personal life’s struggles.

His mother used to say, “You’ve inherited the Longman curse,” a curse Longman says led to his father to take his own life.

It’s a moment he says led him to this question, “I wanted to know, in our DNA… was my code written for me to experience depression.”

Speaking to ‘LIVE with Kelly and Mark,’ Longman recounting what he calls a pattern of mental illness in his family.

“Is it inevitable? My dad has schizophrenia, and he ended his life when I was nine,” Longman said. “His brother also had schizophrenia. My grandfather also ended his life. My mother has clinical depression and I’ve had deep sadness so you wouldn’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out that I find life maybe sometimes a bit tough, you know.”

From Ukraine, Syria, Israel and more, Longman writes, “It’s part of an ongoing pattern that means I’m more at home in a news van, with literal bombs exploding nearby, than I am in a family in which every day is war.”

He says a takeaway of ‘The Inevitable Man’ is this: “You can inherit trauma, but you can also inherit healing, and I think that’s amazing because it gives your children the chance to break these patterns.”