LKay's Reviews > While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

This is an incredible memoir. Compellingly written and deeply researched, Meg Kissinger shares her story of growing up in a family that fought mental illness behind closed doors in an era where such struggles were not to be talked about openly. Everything was hush-hush, swept under the rug, and left to fester. It’s ultimately a devastating story as she shares that two of her siblings took their own lives. It is heartbreaking to read how little support and understanding there was leading up to their deaths, and the ripple effects that this had on the rest of the family. Throughout her lifelong career in journalism, Meg has brought to light the reality of the ways we treat people with mental illness and by sharing her story hopes to continue the fight for change.

This was a very hard review to write as Meg’s family’s story hit very close to home for me. She is close in age with my parents, and the world she grew up in is so familiar to me from hearing my parents’ own childhood stories. Mental illness runs in both sides of my family and it’s something that my parents still battle and struggle to open up about. I have always wondered what it was like for them growing up and how it shaped them into who they are, and this book gave me a peek into what it might have been like. My mom herself has said that my dad’s family just “didn’t talk about their feelings” and I can’t imagine how alienating that must have been as a struggling young adult. It was a lot to examine and wrap my head around as I read this book.

Beyond the topic of mental illness, there are so many interesting threads of history in this book that I’m dying to unravel further - the 15,000 pilots in training that died on american soil, the boom of pharmaceuticals, the “twilight sleep” that was induced upon pregnant women, John F. Kennedy Jr.’s unrealized dream of better mental healthcare. While nowadays we talk more openly about feelings of anxiety and depression, there is still a long way to go in how we treat people with mental illness and in some ways it seems as though we have regressed. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Why, after all these years, can we as a society still not figure this out? Why can’t we do better? When did we stop trying?

This is not a light read by any means, but an important one. It was thought-provoking in so many ways, and the story of Meg’s family is one I won’t soon forget. Thank you to the publisher for the ARC.