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A review by kcoop610
While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence by Meg Kissinger
4.0
Note to self: read more memoirs/biographies written by journalists.
This is the Kissinger family’s story about mental illness in the 1960s, before society recognized mental illness as real. Meg’s father was an alcoholic, her mother admitted to in-patient treatment for depression numerous times, and 2 siblings ended up committing suicide after their own serious mental health issues. Meg, author and journalist, approached telling her and her family’s story from a journalistic perspective, digging into old family records, letters, interviewing her siblings and old family friends, etc. to piece together what was really going on beyond what she remembered from her childhood. It felt both personal to the Kissingers and also like a realistic representation of what it was really like at that time to live with mental illness. I am so grateful that we as a society have evolved our thinking on mental health.
TW: suicide, mental health, substance abuse
This is the Kissinger family’s story about mental illness in the 1960s, before society recognized mental illness as real. Meg’s father was an alcoholic, her mother admitted to in-patient treatment for depression numerous times, and 2 siblings ended up committing suicide after their own serious mental health issues. Meg, author and journalist, approached telling her and her family’s story from a journalistic perspective, digging into old family records, letters, interviewing her siblings and old family friends, etc. to piece together what was really going on beyond what she remembered from her childhood. It felt both personal to the Kissingers and also like a realistic representation of what it was really like at that time to live with mental illness. I am so grateful that we as a society have evolved our thinking on mental health.
TW: suicide, mental health, substance abuse