While You Were Out by Meg Kissinger

A deeply personal and rigorously reported account of one family’s long struggle with a loved one’s severe mental illness and addiction, tracing the fear, confusion and heartbreak of crises and hospitalizations, the ways stigma and a fractured mental-health and criminal-justice system compound suffering, and the emotional, financial and moral costs borne by family members — while also offering clear-eyed reporting about policy failures and compassionate portraits of resilience and the difficult work of recovery.

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