WHILE YOU WERE OUT

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.