#156. An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

Meg Kissinger is an investigative journalist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who spent more than two decades reporting on the failures of the American mental health system. She has won more than a dozen national honors, including two George Polk Awards and the Robert F. Kennedy National Journalism Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She had her first big break as a journalist when she broke the story about the whereabouts of fugitive, Abbie Hoffman. Her recently published memoir, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence, was named an Outstanding Work of Literature winner and an editors’ choice by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Amazon, Goodreads and Independent Booksellers Association. Audible chose it as the Best of the Year. The book tacks the intertwined topics of mental illness and family dysfunction so ably and so eloquently that she has surely taken out several bricks, at least, in the twin walls of shame and aversion that keep these problems from being effectively addressed.

Recorded 6/25/25.