Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

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

5 reviews

helloashluna's review

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Suicide, Antisemitism, and Medical trauma

inked_in_pages's review

challenging dark emotional slow-paced

While You Were Out by Meg Kissinger

An emotional and intelligent memoir written by journalist Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out follows Kissinger's family as they grapple with the impacts of addiction, severe and persistent mental health and the stigma around each of those things in the 1960s and 1970s.

Kissinger writes her story in way that is both emotionally moving while also making room for her readers to understand the facts about mental health (or lack their of) in the 1970s. As a mental health care provider, I was proud of the way that Kissinger sheds light on the stigmatization of both while also calling out the dangers of swinging the pendulum too far and over correcting.

This memoir felt deeply personal to me as she wrote about her families struggles and the long term impacts of unspoken generational trauma. She puts her investigative journalism background to use taking the memoir a step further to discuss the policy changes over the years that have continued to displace those with severe and persistent mental illness and she does it in a way that is understandable.

I absolutely loved and appreciated Kissinger's vulnerability, raw story telling and gumption in sharing this must read memoir. I will be recommending to many of my coworkers, colleagues and even some clients in the future.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Addiction and Physical abuse

louiepotterbook's review

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Antisemitism, Grief, Medical trauma, Abortion, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gaslighting, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

bookreviewswithkb's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective

3.5

okay i have a lot of varying thoughts about this one

this book is an intimate portrait of one family’s struggle with mental illness and the lack of a mental health system to support their health and wellbeing. how difficult it is to crawl your way from underneath the suffocating weight of a mental health condition that is left either untreated or mistreated. about how a family scrambles to understand how to support each other with minimal resources and no adequate professional support. it’s an important read, bringing life and humanity to the impact of the lack of a comprehensive mental health system 

but… i felt no emotional connection to any of the family members, or the author. and the author continually insinuates there was violence and physical abuse in the home, but never processes it or its connection on her and her siblings mental well-being 

and i think the author tried to minimize the extent of her brother’s anti-semitism by equating this behavior to a symptom of his mental illness; it felt very problematic 

still lol’ing at the goodreads review i read that said this book was “too much about mental illness” ????

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide

Moderate: Antisemitism

Minor: Physical abuse and Violence

briannad4's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Cancer, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Suicide, Forced institutionalization, Antisemitism, and Death of parent

Moderate: Medical trauma, Car accident, Abortion, and Pregnancy