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

At the height of the AIDs crisis in the 80s people did not speak of the epidemic, including President Reagan who was quite clear that if it was only killing Gay people (presumably he would have used different words) it didn't matter to real Americans. The rallying cry for those of us who disagreed was Silence=Death. That was true of AIDs, once the talking started so did the path to managing the illness. In this book Meg Kissinger wants us to know the same rules apply to mental illness.

Kissinger is a reporter who has written about America's treatment of the mentally ill for years (she has been a Pulitzer finalist and is now a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism.) She is also a member of a family that has felt the pain of mental illness more than most. Both parents were mentally ill and self-medicated with alcohol. All eight of the children (yes, 8, the Catholic church has a lot to answer for) have been affected by mental illness. Two of the eight siblings died by suicide, and two others had suicidal ideation. Through all of this, the directions to the children were clear. Shut up and deal with it. Mommy disappears for a time, shut up and deal with it. Daddy loses job after job while buying nearly everything he sees, squirreling away purchases of luxury goods so no one can see. His behavior moves the family from affluence to penury costing the children a life they saw as normal. Shut up and deal with it Children are wholly unsupervised and are seriously harmed over and over. Do not speak of it. Ambulances in front of the house are a common occurrence but no one is allowed to discuss why. The ambulances stop when one sibling suicides in a brutal manner after being repeatedly saved when trying less gruesome means. The family is told that if anyone asks it was an accident. And that silence made things worse. It made the surviving family members sicker and sadder, and possibly it took away opportunities to thwart a second suicide. And the collective silence about mental illness makes this worse for millions of other families feeling the impact of mental illness and allows the state to get away with no or substandard services.

Kissinger tells a gripping story, and makes suggestions for meaningful change in personal behavior and policy. The writing is impeccable and honest, the story relatable, the message incredibly important. Often in books like this where the writer must make herself vulnerable, the story can seem distancing -- tied to this one particular person with these very specific circumstances. That is generally fine, and there are many books I have loved where that was true. But in this book I loved that it did not feel like I was reading about one particular family, this felt like a story that impacts nearly everyone based on personal experience. It is as if she atomizes the tale rather than distilling it. This is a book that shows off the importance of a journalistic style in telling our stories.