While You Were Out

An interesting if familiar memoir about growing up in a large Catholic family whose modus operandi was secrets and silence. The author was fourth of eight children, with an alcoholic (depressed) mother and a volatile (bipolar) father. Two of her siblings died by suicide (not a spoiler, it's in the book description) and many of the others struggled with mental illness.

Kissinger became an award-winning journalist who reported primarily on the abysmal state of mental health care. Unfortunately, only the last third of While You Were Out focuses on her research into other families' horrifying experiences with both institutionalization and de-institutionalization, which feels like a wasted opportunity. However, she knows how to tell a story, and with her surviving siblings' help, she has crafted a detailed personal family history that will undoubtedly ring true for many of us who grew up in the 1960s and 70s, when mental illness meant shame and weakness.