Graphic medicine: a different way to inform, connect, and heal
by Nora Hickey
Ilustration by Adam Allsuch Boardman
It was a typical evening — the remnants of dinner tucked away, my dog beside me on the couch as my thumb played out the familiar motion of scrolling, all of it now seemingly doom-scrolling, the news hitting faster and more sensational than ever. Then, a breath. A series of blue-inked comic panels that acted as a kind of antidote to the anxiety-inducing litany of posts.
The color-saturated images depicted snapshots of specific moments of the five senses — a way to slow down and embody the cacophonous experience of being alive. This comic, and others drawing out other sensory perceptions, were a part of Drawing Together, an event hosted by an organization called Graphic Medicine. These monthly comic workshops were created during 2020 “to help combat the social isolation of pandemic-related lockdowns, as well as to support and promote coping and healing,” according to MK Czerwiec, a co-founder of both Graphic Medicine and the group’s Drawing Together sessions.
Graphic Medicine is both the name of a genre and the organization that has been foundational to the genre’s flourishing. Essentially, this form of art uses the template of a comic to show something medical — often from the perspective of a patient, but works also include stories from the clinician, student, and caretaker experience, too.
Having been a teacher and reader of comics for years, I am familiar with comics: the moving and autobiographical graphic novels, the gripping and colorful comics for children, the smart and skewering editorial strips. But I was much less acquainted with the concept of graphic medicine, a name conceived in 2007 to describe comics that addressed health issues.
Art therapy, a discipline that uses all types of art to facilitate expression and understanding, is perhaps the closest relation, as both use principles from two seemingly disparate worlds to offer a path to healing for patients. But graphic medicine is distinct in its use of the comic form solely and in its inclusion of anyone involved in healthcare — giving, receiving, witnessing. It takes the familiar panels, speech bubbles, and stylized (or simple) characters of the long-running genre to highlight the multitude of experiences in the world of human health.
Adam Allsuch Boardman
As a nurse (RN, MA) and comics creator, co-founder Czerwiec became (and stayed) involved because she “saw the great potential in using comics to help make difficult situations better for caregivers, patients, and their families.”
She is an active and generous figure in the community. Since her early days in practice, she saw comics’ therapeutic potential: “they can help increase empathy and remove stigma, and with it a corresponding burden of isolation. Making comics about difficult situations can help improve processing of those experiences by externalizing them and organizing sometimes fractured reactions into manageable narratives.”
Like Czerwiec, other doctors, clinicians, and researchers are increasingly turning their attention to this emerging field, both on the page and in various clinical studies.
Their findings so far are hopeful. One study introduced comic-making to a group of cancer patients. Over the course of ten comic-making workshops, these participants gained “perspectives for redefining their stories that provided new insights and paths to explore their medical traumas and reanimating their bodies.”
On the clinician side, a group of researchers found that using graphic medicine in a structured four-week residential program increased medical students’ empathy and helped them identify new symptoms of neurological disorders.
Abby Fuoto, a nurse practitioner of geriatrics at the University of Arizona School of Medicine and Hospital recently presented on the palliative power (the ability to relieve symptoms without addressing the condition itself) of comics at a conference. Her interest was indirectly sparked by her husband, a comics scholar. As she accompanied him to various conventions and comic shops, Fuoto came across image-driven pages depicting the stories of patients. “As a palliative provider, I am always looking to understand a patient’s life — what makes life meaningful, brings them joy, and who matters,” she explains.
“Comics help illuminate what matters most in a manner often lost during a clinical encounter. It’s also fascinating to see a drawn representation of things my patients tell me all the time (about their pain, about nausea, about anxiety, etc.).”
Adam Allsuch Boardman
As well as in pages, Fuoto explores the internet to further her understanding of graphic medicine. One of the first sites she found was Dr. Nathan Gray’s Ink Vessel. “He’s a palliative medicine physician and draws comics that reflect the palliative clinician’s experience as well as helpful informational comics for patients and families,” she explains. “I have worked in healthcare for 24 years and coming across his work was like being seen for the first time, professionally, finding my community of colleagues whose experiences are akin to mine,” she continues.
In this time of flourishing online social spaces, with everyone just a few taps away from a whole world of shared experience, graphic medicine has flourished. COVID lockdowns, in particular, encouraged the existing community to find space in a remote form. Today, graphic medicine can be found on nearly every online platform. On Substack, Hysterical Problems chronicles one person’s IVF journey via comics. Another account publishes drawing prompts that often probe the personal, including health, for kids and adults — this is DrawTogether (not related to Graphic Medicine’s Drawing Together, but certainly kin). Over on Twitter the #graphicmedicine hashtag reveals a stack of tweets containing comics, scholarly articles, recommendations, and more.
Other comics workshops that have gone online include the Sequential Artist Workshops (SAW), which feature free online classes every Friday. Many of these Zoom meetings contain discussions and activities highlighting the intersection of health and comics. A recent one was called “Drawing Feelings” and participants shared their comics from the night: a confused and frustrated experience with a mammogram, a person treading water focusing on breath, and another showing a series of panels with a key unlocking a door in an affecting visual metaphor. The organization notes that these weekly virtual gatherings are “a community-building exercise, in the midst of vast forces trying to squash us and pull us apart.”
Of course, the organization Graphic Medicine itself has a bountiful trove of resources. On their website, reviews, articles, and opportunities appear regularly. They also host an in-person conference every summer where the community can learn and share ideas and resources. Their Facebook page has even more updates. Here, group members can post comics or questions to a receptive community. These thriving communities reflect the vision of Czerwiec and the other founders of Graphic Medicine: “Our goal was to combat the social isolation of pandemic-related lockdowns, as well as to support and promote coping and community.”
Ultimately, graphic medicine is good medicine — especially when it is accessible and collaborative, like Drawing Together. As Czerwiec says, “this is technology at its best.” Indeed, it is technology that shares the power of comics and proves that they are more than entertainment — they can also illuminate, comfort, and even heal.