While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

Meg began to investigate mental illness and how it affects Americans. She discovered that hundreds of thousands of patients were released from psychiatric institutions in the 1940s and 1950s and consequently abandoned by the mental health care system. While President Kennedy signed a bill promising reform and community services, he was killed weeks later and many of his intentions were forgotten. Since then, there has been a chronic shortage of psychological help and access in the US, and those with severe mental illnesses are stigmatized. Meg traveled across the country, meeting people with mental illness and their families, compiling stories of real people affected by a failing system. She met an unhoused man whose mother felt powerless to help him and dozens of families whose loved ones did not receive the help they needed.

At the same time, Holmer and Jake joined a support group for people with loved ones who died by suicide, and the group created a quilt to honor their loved ones. When Meg and her siblings went to see the quilt’s unveiling, they found a patch for a woman who ended her life at age 87. Instead of allowing themselves to feel grief for their siblings and everyone else on the blanket, they laughed at the absurdity they felt they saw before them.