882 reviews for:

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

Meg Kissinger

4.28 AVERAGE

ndelaurence's review against another edition

3.75

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

kfournier's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark emotional funny informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

stephabee_reads's review against another edition

4.0

emotional informative reflective sad

sammyisobsessed24's review against another edition

4.0

emotional hopeful informative sad

toastgrl's review against another edition

4.0

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

raquel_rojas's review

5.0

dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

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no notes. i’m not even a non fiction person and I dont know what to say. If you or a loved one suffer from mental illness you have to read this 

primrosepath's review

5.0

hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

readingpicnic's review against another edition

5.0

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This is such a devastating book, but I’m so glad it exists. The compassionate approach that the author takes towards severe mental illness and the honest thought processes of working towards this view is a point of view I don’t see very often. This book really hit hard as someone who has a lot of mental illness in my own family from both sides, but especially my mom’s side since her brother committed s*icide when she was in high school. I beg you to check the trigger warnings for this book, especially if you’ve lost (or almost lost) someone close to you to s*icide or dealt with s*icidal thoughts yourself, but it is so well written and has incredible narration from the author. The advice for living with the grief of losing someone in this way was very helpful I think, as this book was very well researched due to the author being a journalist who wrote extensively on how the mentally ill are treated in the US, but also contains personal advice on living with grief from some of her living siblings and people she connected with during her lifetime of research. I’m so glad I picked this up; thank you for the recommendation @bridgetish, this is why you’re my favorite booktoker.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cancer, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Antisemitism, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Ableism, Bullying, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Sexual assault, Police brutality, Abortion, Pregnancy

Minor: Eating disorder, Pedophilia

tctctcme's review

4.0

challenging emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

samianneyay's review

4.25

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-paced