A recent blog post on Somatosphere sparked my interest in the role that comics can play in the study and delivery of health care, an emerging field called "graphic medicine." The term was coined by UK-based Ian Williams, MD, who is an artist and independent humanities scholar as well as a physician. He recently launched a website of the same name.
The post introduces a few new books that just came out on the subject: Graphic Medicine Manifesto, a collaborative work by six health-care professionals and humanities scholars, and Ian Williams' The Bad Doctor. It also describes how comics can open us up to new ways of seeing in ways that text alone cannot:
Comics allow us to ask how we can “orient” ourselves... toward the potentiality of images and away from the systematizing effects of text alone... [Comics use] images and imagistic thinking as a way to see a different mode of existence.
Since it's an anthropology blog, it suggests that a "graphic medical anthropology" would be a great way to accomplish the anthropologist's goal of "seeing structure, complexity, nuance, emergence, and multiplicity simultaneously." We anthropologists often try to achieve this goal with complicated metaphors and theories, but perhaps the old adage about a picture being worth a thousand words holds true in this case.
The post notes that drawings can provide an experience of self-reflection for the artist, and can inspire readers to readily and easily respond with their own experience, making the work more of a dialog. They can introduce "theoretical orientations" in ways that are more accessible, and can expose power relations in ordinary lived experience. Ordinary lived experience is particularly well conveyed by comics; they showcase the mundane and make it meaningful. They can take those “ordinary, chronic and cruddy moments" and convey what it's like to be part of our society.
Previously: Cancer Ninja fights patient misinformation, one cartoon at a time, Using graphic art to understand the emotional aspects of disease, A comic look at 12 medical specialties, Economist to explain health reform through graphic novel, and Webcomic xkcd gets medical
Illustration by Ian Williams, “Autography as Auto-Therapy: Psychic Pain and the Graphic Memoir.” Journal of Medical Humanities 2011, reposted from Somatosphere
