This book investigates how graphic medicine enables sufferers of mental illness to visualize the intricacies of their internal mindscape through visual metaphors and reclaim their voice amidst stereotyped and prejudiced assumptions of mental illness as a disease of deviance and violence.
"A brilliant analysis of the ways comics represent the infinite delicacy of human subjectivity, Metaphors of Mental Illness in Graphic Medicine is both a sophisticated meditation on the complexity inherent in the comics artform and a guide to using that complexity as a therapeutic tool. Drs. Saji and Venkatesan's analysis marks a new level of confidence for Comics Studies, one that stops apologizing for comics' fundamental difference from prose, poetry, and film and instead recognizes this very difference as a powerful asset for understanding who we are and how we think." William Kuskin, University of Colorado Boulder
"A welcome challenge to the binary view of sanity through the lens of comics." Matthew N. Noe, Harvard Medical School
"Saji and Venkatesan's work is essential, illuminating the power of comics to enrich our understanding of subjective mental health experiences, and the impact of those experiences on our daily lives." Nate Powell, National Book Award winning graphic novelist of March
"A welcome challenge to the binary view of sanity through the lens of comics." Matthew N. Noe, Harvard Medical School
"Saji and Venkatesan's work is essential, illuminating the power of comics to enrich our understanding of subjective mental health experiences, and the impact of those experiences on our daily lives." Nate Powell, National Book Award winning graphic novelist of March