WASHINGTON – Rep. Patrick Kennedy has decided not to seek re-election to Congress, saying his life is "taking a new direction." Kennedy taped a message to be aired on television in Rhode Island on Sunday night. The Associated Press viewed the message ahead of the announcement.

The decision by the eight-term congressman comes less than a month after a stunning Republican upset in the race for the Massachusetts Senate seat his late father, Edward Kennedy, held for almost half a century. Patrick Kennedy has been in and out of treatment for substance abuse since crashing his car outside the U.S Capitol in 2006. Still, he has been comfortably re-elected twice since then, after making mental health care his signature issue.