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

Name: While You Were Out
Brand: Macmillan Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Meg Kissinger
ISBN: 9781250903471

Author: Meg Kissinger

Narrator: Meg Kissinger

Unabridged: 11 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Published: 09/05/2023

Categories: Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Memoirs, Family & Relationships, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

Synopsis

From award-winning journalist Meg Kissinger, a searing memoir of a family besieged by mental illness, as well as an incisive exploration of the systems that failed them and a testament to the love that sustained them.

Growing up in the 1960s in the suburbs of Chicago, Meg Kissinger’s family seemed to live a charmed life. With eight kids and two loving parents, the Kissingers radiated a warm, boisterous energy. Whether they were spending summer days on the shores of Lake Michigan, barreling down the ski slopes, or navigating the trials of their Catholic school, the Kissingers always knew how to live large and play hard.

But behind closed doors, a harsher reality was unfolding—a heavily medicated mother hospitalized for anxiety and depression, a manic father prone to violence, and children in the throes of bipolar disorder and depression, two of whom would take their own lives. Through it all, the Kissingers faced the world with their signature dark humor and the unspoken family rule: never talk about it.

While You Were Out begins as the personal story of one family’s struggles then opens outward, as Kissinger details how childhood tragedy catalyzed a journalism career focused on exposing our country’s flawed mental health care. Combining the intimacy of memoir with the rigor of investigative reporting, the book explores the consequences of shame, the havoc of botched public policy, and the hope offered by new treatment strategies.

Powerful, candid and filled with surprising humor, this is the story of one family’s love and resilience in face of great loss.

A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books.

About Meg Kissinger

Meg Kissinger spent more than two decades traveling across the country to report on America’s mental health system for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, she has won dozens of accolades, including two George Polk Awards, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, awards from Investigative Reporters and Editors, and two National Journalism Awards. Kissinger teaches investigative reporting at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and was a visiting professor at DePauw University, her alma mater. Her stories on the abysmal living conditions for people with mental illness inspired changes to Wisconsin law and led to the creation of hundreds of new housing units. She lives in Milwaukee with Larry Boynton, her husband of more than 40 years.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Catherine on September 21, 2023

**Many thanks to NetGalley, @CeladonBooks, and Meg Kissinger for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 9.5!!** Meg Kissinger grew up in a veritable whirlwind of uncertainty: as one of EIGHT children, life was always an adventure. Though she had two loving parents, the duo presented one side of the......more

Goodreads review by Sherri on July 30, 2023

This memoir is heart wrenching about a family of 10 with mental illness. There are many triggers in this book that are hard to listen to. Suicide is very imminent in this book. I had a hard time with that part as I’ve known 2 people in 4 years who committed this horrific way to go. The narrator/auth......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on March 01, 2025

I really appreciated Meg Kissinger’s honesty in this book. While some mental illness (e.g., depression, anxiety) is becoming a bit more destigmatized, severe mental illness as well as death by suicide can still be so frowned upon, so it’s powerful for Kissinger to open up about all the mental health......more

Goodreads review by Meagan on March 26, 2024

Thought this was a beautiful memoir. Lots of insights into the world of mental health and how to be a better advocate for those struggling. It was inspiring to hear about everything Meg has been able to do to help and make changes. Her reflections on her family and her ability to stay close to her s......more

Goodreads review by LKay on July 05, 2023

This is an incredible memoir. Compellingly written and deeply researched, Meg Kissinger shares her story of growing up in a family that fought mental illness behind closed doors in an era where such struggles were not to be talked about openly. Everything was hush-hush, swept under the rug, and left......more

Quotes

"Meg Kissinger is a world-class reporter and a rip-roaring storyteller. Her heartfelt, eviscerating, deeply introspective investigation of long-held family secrets will leave you quaking with rage about our broken mental-health system—and grateful that writers like her are on the case."
—Robert Kolker, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road

"As a journalist, Meg Kissinger has long been shining a light on our broken mental health care system by telling the stories of people struggling with mental illness. In While You Were Out, she tells the more personal and painful narrative of the people in her own family who have struggled with mental illness. A gifted storyteller, Kissinger reminds us, in the words of her deceased brother, 'Only love and understanding can conquer this disease.' This wonderful book offers us both."
—Tom Insel, MD, Former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health

"Frank and revelatory, While You Were Out is a story of overwhelming power, chronicling the kind of American tragedy that feels both aberrant and ever-present."
—Rachel Aviv, author of Strangers to Ourselves

"Bearing witness is an act of courage. Meg Kissinger has courageously given us a chronicle of love, loss, family and obligation, all refracted through the lens of mental illness. Here is a story as urgent and indelible as the bonds that hold its characters together. In speaking to her family's experience she has laid bare our own collective one."
—Jelani Cobb, Dean of Columbia Journalism School and author of The Substance of Hope

"For years, Meg Kissinger had the mental health beat pretty much to herself. For the readers of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, she turned out one incredible story after another about the ordinary people who suffered from mental illness and addiction—and from the failure of health care institutions and local and state government to care for them. She wrote occasionally about her own family too. Now, in this gripping and poignant memoir, she has put it all together, telling the big-picture story of this country’s catastrophic inability to create anything resembling a mental health system and the impact that those failings and a ruthless illness had on her own family. If you want to understand mental health in America, this is required reading."
—Rob Waters, Founding Editor of MindSiteNews

"Meg Kissinger's memoir of a boisterous, loving, troubled family does the nearly impossible: tells a deeply personal story in the context of a nation-wide mental crisis, treating siblings and strangers with equal compassion and journalistic rigor. A beautiful, heartfelt book."
—Liz Scheier, author of Never Simple

"A smart, stirring family memoir of suicide and survival, and a bracing call for more investigative journalism on mental health and addiction."
—Patrick J. Kennedy, former Congressman (D-RI) and New York Times bestselling co-author of A Common Struggle

"More than a poignant memoir....this is an important and wise book, one which sheds light on a subject that is still surrounded by shame and silence."
—Daphne Merkin, author of the memoir This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression and the novel 22 Minutes of Unconditional Love

Awards

Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year