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

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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