Name: Mental Health Awareness and Suicide Prevention Panel with Meg Kissinger
Start: 2025-03-09T12:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-03-09T13:30:00-05:00
Location: St. Luke's Episcopal Church

Mental Health Awareness and Suicide Prevention Panel with Meg Kissinger

The author of "While You Were Out" will be in conversation with Reverend Kat Banakis and Kim Hassenfeld, LCSW at St. Luke's Episcopal Church
About this Event

On Sunday March 9 at 12:00 PM, Bookends & Beginnings is pleased to be partnering with St. Luke’s Episcopal Church of Evanston and the Counseling Center of the North Shore to present a discussion about mental health and suicide prevention with Meg Kissinger, author of the acclaimed memoir

Growing up in the 1960s in Wilmette, Meg Kissinger's family seemed to live a charmed life. But behind closed doors, a harsher reality was unfolding: anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder besieged her loving parents and seven siblings, two of whom would take their own lives. Kissinger’s searing account in While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence chronicles the ravages of mental illness, investigates the systems that failed her family, and testifies to the love that sustained them. At this event (to be held at St. Luke’s), Meg will be joined by St. Luke's Reverend Kat Banakis, as well as psychologist Kim Hassenfeld, LCSW to discuss the importance of breaking the stigma around discussing mental illness and suicide.

Meg Kissinger spent more than two decades traveling across the country for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to report on our nation’s failed mental health system, winning more than a dozen national honors. She taught investigative reporting at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and is a trainer for the school’s Dart Center on Trauma and Journalism.

Known for her commitment to interfaith and inter-denominational efforts, Rev. Kat Banakis currently serves as Rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Evanston, Illinois. She is producer and host of the Holy Holy Podcast and author of . She holds both a BA in Religious Studies and a Master's of Divinity from Yale.

Kim Hassenfeld, LCSW and Clinical Director of the Counseling Center of the North Shore, a non-profit counseling center that provides affordable, high-quality therapy to communities on the North Shore.

This event will take place from noon until 1:30 PM. Signed books will be available for purchase. Local organizations that provide mental health resources will be present.