888 reviews for:

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

Meg Kissinger

4.28 AVERAGE

amandaraewalden's review

5.0

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Wow. WOW. Wow.
Trauma with a capital T. Stories of suicide, emotional abuse, and alcoholism that surrounded the author’s childhood and life. Yet, also stories of life, forgiveness and understanding, sobriety, and healing.

grimmmar's review

5.0

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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I never have had a nonfiction book hit me as hard as this one did. I knew we had mental health issue in my own family and really though we were unique and had felt embarrassed by it but hearing that another families have experienced basically the same situation as us is heartbreaking but incredible that we are not alone in this feeling. Meg has done a phenomenal job at describing her life and it was so reassuring to see that she had her siblings support through it all. As hard as it was to read some portions, it was needed to be said and heard. I am so happy this book exist. 

kendallshelfmade's review

4.25

dark reflective tense medium-paced

homosexualbats's review against another edition

3.5

dark reflective slow-paced

deathcardforcutie's review

5.0

emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

eaking's review

4.0

challenging dark inspiring tense medium-paced

mswrambel's review

4.0

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Thank you to NetGalley for this eARC. Well, when I was trying to select new novels for my memoir course, I knew from the subtitle that this one would be in strong contention. Kissinger's memoir is heartbreaking, especially in its scale. The story begins with a family of 10, 8 siblings in total. The tragedies that befall this family are vast and span the course of decades, but really, the most tragic is that many of these tragedies happen in an era of silence. The attitudes toward mental health in America are changing, somewhat, but this memoir shows the scope of that change from the 1950s, beginning with deinstitutionalization, onward into the contemporary moment and in the aftermath of COVID. The memoir sings best when Kissinger focuses on her family, but there is a notable shift in the tone of the text starting around part 3, lapsing from a family-focused piece to the larger implications of medical care for the severely mentally ill. It breaks one out of the reverie a bit, but overall, this text hits you in the gut and it's one that I'll be recommending to my students for a long, long time.

bethmcbride's review

4.0

informative reflective medium-paced

alexs_escape's review

5.0

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i read this for a final project and this was amazing as im usually not a nonfiction reader. it really brought to light how mental illness is looked down on and how it affects even the closest person to us. and how so many of them suffer silently.

if you plan on reading this book please be wary of the trigger warnings: abuse, alcoholism, abortion, suicide, drug overdose

this was a masterpiece but it truly hurt me at some points to read because of the trauma the family experienced. this is not for the weak.

lydia_burge's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional funny informative reflective medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt