Reviews - While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

862 reviews for:

While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

Meg Kissinger

4.28 AVERAGE

shamelessbibliophile41's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Raw, intimate, tragic, hopeful; the book our society needs to better understand mental illness and its impact on families and generational trauma

“Only love and understanding can conquer this disease”

cbsargent19935's review against another edition

4.0

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

gooseplusmav's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional hopeful informative sad medium-paced

kbricks5's review against another edition

3.5

dark emotional informative

I am passionate about all things mental health, so when I saw this listed in the “Herstory” list on Goodreads, it piqued my interest.

The first half of this book is a “sort of” chronological retelling of her childhood and early adulthood. When I say “sort of” I mean there were times where we jumped around a bit in the timeline. But overall, I found this book to be fascinating and triggering due to the relatable content (large catholic upbringing, parents who didn’t communicate, violent siblings, suicidal attempts, multi-generational mental health struggles etc). I knew this book would be tough content material, but I didn’t know how much I would truly understand. The second half is the authors experience with investigative journalism and uncovering mental health care in our country and the corruption surrounding it. I found all of this to be heartbreaking, but true.

I had mixed feelings on how to rate this book. My issues with the book lie in the authors own bias. It felt like the whole book she wanted someone to blame for her brother’s death, while lacking empathy for her sister. And she advocated for better mental healthcare but wouldn’t even seek therapy for herself. Also the lack of accountability for her parents really rubbed me the wrong way. The writing style occasionally lost me with the quick intro of new characters with no context and the “telling” instead of “showing”.

So while I found the book fascinating, I found myself frustrated by a few things. Kudos to the author for writing such an honest memoir when her family was determined to keep secrets for so long.

3.5 stars