NEURODIVERSITY AND MENTAL HEALTH IN COMICS :
NEURODIVERSITY AND MENTAL HEALTH IN COMICS :
FROM OBJECT TO SELF-EXPRESSION
Being neurodiverse , or neurodivergent , has moved from clinical shadows into mainstream awareness . More importantly , neurodiversity has become a self-identifying adjective for those whose lives are affected by their experiences on the Autistic Spectrum , functioning proficiently in situations designed for neurotypical people due to Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity , Dyslexia , Dyscalculia , Down Syndrome , and a range of other neurologically-rooted experiential conditions . There may be no better way for empowered neurodiverse creatives to find successful expression and welcoming audiences than through sequential art , where perspective is primary in the storytelling .
Concerns related to mental health may or may not arise as a neurodivergent person negotiates the world arranged for those who are neurotypical . Mental illness can and often is unrelated to any neurodiverse condition but rather to any of variety of causes with illness having its onset at any stage in life often ( not always !) a result of immediate trauma or exposure to conditions which are , literally , sickening . However , what both those with such psychiatric illnesses as schizophrenia or the more benign but equally painful conditions of clinical depression and anxiety share with those who selfidentify as neurodivergent is the reality of having to negotiate the use of a wide range of psychiatric prescriptions that too often seem to exacerbate personal issues . And again , those who combat such illnesses — and the established health systems that seek to relieve them , are coming into their own as the reporters rather than the reported upon .
Comics exploring neurodiversity , mental illness , and healthcare providers ’ responses to such realities through medication or other “ you-need-to-be-fixed ” regimes , take readers into authentic stories by doing what comics do best : mirror how humans experience the shared world by weaving images with words . Keiko Tobe ’ s massive and detailed manga With the Light : Raising an Autistic Child was published 25 years ago and explores in sensitive yet explicit detail the challenges faced by the mother of a severely autistic , nonverbal young son . Since then , authors and artists who experience the world and relationships themselves in nonneurotypical ways have taken up telling and showing their
20 diamondbookshelf . org
By Francisca Goldsmith
realities , dreams , and hopes themselves in revelatory graphic novel and comics formats .
Moving away from observations by a neurotypical narrator to the experiential viewpoint of neurodivergent creators is a giant step that followed a decade after With the Light and which now continues to blossom . In 2009 , Tory Woollcott took a leadership role with her graphic novel about her neurodivergence from the neurotypical world of expectations visited on school age children . Dyslexic and self-aware of the need to show that experience , her graphic novel Mirror Mind explores how her difficulty with print affected her childhood . Woollcott ’ s career as a cartoonist continues , proof that a diagnosis of dyslexia does not preclude success in publishing .
Published in France and available in English , Invisible Differences by Julie Dachez , who was diagnosed with Asperger ’ s Syndrome as an adult , and with art by Mademoiselle Caroline , who lives with depression , gives adult readers Dachez ’ s own story of the positive effects of her diagnosis on how she can conduct her life with less interference by the disconcerting psychological reactions she had experienced in the neurotypical sphere of daily life . Here is a graphic novel where color is spare ( and red ) and serves as a communication expression itself among the largely black and white panels .
Recent and forthcoming from creatives for whom neurodiversity is a self-identifying reality , deliver both their own perspectives and the insights readers who may or may not be coming to terms with similar concerns , can welcome . Bex Ollerton has provided us with explorations of life on the autism spectrum in an anthology collecting the sequential art accounts of fellow cartoonists in Sensory : Life on the Spectrum which is accessible to readers from middle school up and can be a valuable resource for bridging the gap between those experiencing neurodivergent lives and those who are neurotypical . With more than 30 contributors , every comics reader can find one or another or many ways into clarity about life on the spectrum .
Camouflage : The Hidden Lives of Autistic Women approaches the title subject in a sequential art narrative that brings both clinical and social science concerns to show readers the underdiagnosis of neurodivergence in girls that becomes a condition with added complications as they grow into neurodivergent women . While creatives Sarah Bargiela and Sophie may stand outside as researchers and reporters , the book includes interviews with three women who identify as autistic . It also reminds readers that mental health information and information about neurodiversity as a life condition can be found in graphic novel collections as well as magazine articles and textbooks .