Getting Comfortable with Graphic Medicine
摘要
This chapter identifies graphic medicineGraphic medicine and demonstrates its value as an interdisciplinary methodology for approaching women’s mental health challenges, emphasizing what focusing on the formal qualities of comics might enable. It discusses five women’s stories of mental health struggles conveyed in the medium of comics and explains why comics are effective in expressing the phenomenological aspects of mental health experiences for both the creator and the reader/viewer. In familiarizing readers/viewers with comics as a method of communication in this context, it shows the power of attending to not simply the content but also the manner of expression. This supports a close focus on the knowledge-building process itself, both in those who suffer mental health challenges and in their interlocutors and carers. Aside from being therapeutic for creators, the book argues that comics facilitate others (including medical practitioners, carers, friends and family) in gaining specific insights into the lived experience of struggling with mental health challenges.