While You Were Out

April 1, 2023

A Pulitzer Prize finalist who frequently covers the U.S. mental healthcare system, Kissinger relates growing up in a family beset by mental health issues in While You Were Out (75,000-copy first printing). Prepub Alert.

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July 15, 2023
A stark examination of the tragic cost of untreated mental illness. Award-winning Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigative reporter Kissinger examines the country's inadequate mental health system through the experiences of her own troubled family. "We were a family of eight children," she writes, "born over a span of twelve years, to parents with serious illnesses who gobbled tranquilizers and drank themselves silly many nights." Her mother was repeatedly hospitalized for anxiety and depression; her father, who exhibited inexplicably sudden mood changes, eventually was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Both were alcoholics. In light of their parents' behavior, the children felt "like little deer teetering through the forest, vulnerable and unprotected." During Kissinger's childhood, her mother would go missing periodically. No explanation was given to the children; once, she and her sister were packed up and taken to a relative's house for a few days, not knowing why or if they would ever be retrieved. By the time she was in high school, it was clear that many of her siblings were suffering from depression, and one of her sisters repeatedly tried to kill herself. Sent to the Menninger Clinic for treatment, she returned home "meaner and more physically abusive than ever." With the help of her siblings, Kissinger pieces together the depression, paranoia, and mania among them that had never been talked about as they were growing up. After every crisis, she writes, "we simply went back to our old routines with no therapy or family discussions. None." Unsurprisingly, mental illness became her focus as a journalist, and her reportage on her county's mental health resources led to reforms of state law and won a George Polk Award. Expanding that investigation for this book, Kissinger identifies endemic problems in dealing with mentally ill individuals, including housing, social support, medical treatment, and hospitalization. When, she asks, should a person's right to autonomy "yield to their safety or the safety of others?" An impassioned argument for reform in caring for the afflicted.

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Starred review from July 31, 2023
In this searing debut memoir, Pulitzer finalist Kissinger documents how mental illness impacted her family and led her to spend more than 20 years reporting on mental health in America. Born in Illinois in 1957, Kissinger was the fourth of eight children raised by parents “who gobbled tranquilizers and drank themselves silly many nights.” Her mother, Jean, battled depression and anxiety, and was hospitalized several times during Kissinger’s childhood, while her father, Holmer, was prone to rages and violence. Two of Kissinger’s siblings—her older sister, Nancy, and younger brother, Danny—died by suicide in early adulthood. After highlighting these difficulties, Kissinger moves on to her career as a reporter of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and discusses how her family life encouraged her to cover gaps in America’s treatment of the mentally ill, particularly the 5.6% of adults with “serious and persistent mental illness.” She resists calling that treatment a “system,” because “very few things work together to help people with mental illness.” Throughout, Kissinger brings passion and immediacy to the subject, sharing her own story and those of her sources with bracing frankness. She’s particularly good at the complexities of talking about suicide, and how pressures against such conversations may have prevented her family from averting tragedy. As both a candid family portrait and a polemic against institutional neglect of people with mental illness, this delivers. Agent: Gail Ross, Ross Yoon Agency. (Sept.)Correction: A previous version of this review inaccurately explained why the author’s mother was absent for periods of time during the author’s childhood.

September 1, 2023
Journalist Kissinger bravely shares the story of her large Catholic family's struggles with alcoholism and mental illness in a Chicago suburb. Her mom delivered five girls and three boys between 1952 and 1964 and struggled with anxiety and depression. Kissinger's father could be violent. Kissinger, who seems to be thriving with a supportive husband and two grown kids, brings her family to life with vivid details. Her mother displays a picture of Grandma in the living room every time the "old lady" visits, then immediately afterward tucks it back in a drawer. More disturbing are her sister Nancy's last words to her, "Fuck you." Before long, Nancy takes pills and then walks in front of a moving train to be sure she dies. Nineteen years later, Kissinger's brother Danny ends his life by wrapping a cord around his neck. Kissinger devotes much of her reporting career to traveling across the country to figure out why 5.6 percent of adults with serious mental illness are so misunderstood and inadequately treated. She pulls no punches in this honest, tragic account.

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