[Graphic Medicine] Graphic Medicine: History, Theory, and Practice

2019

As a constructive derivative of several altruistic movements, such as narrative medicine, medical humanities and health humanities, graphic medicine is a nonconformist ideological inverse to the absolutism of medical knowledge. Exposing the limitations of biomedicine, which prioritises the voice of the physician, graphic medicine provides an inclusive approach towards medical conditions through its perspectival richness and experiential realities. Formulated as a means to express the voice of the marginalised community of sufferers, graphic medicine expedites creative and forceful articulation of the narratives of patients and caregivers, which were hitherto discarded as inauthentic by the existing medical system. As a wholesome methodology that equally values the subjective experiences of patients, physicians and caregivers, graphic medicine provides numerous ways of representing affective truths about illness conditions. Thus, by creating a mutually beneficial field of study for both biomedicine and humanities by yoking together medicine and comics, graphic medicine fosters an empathetic attitude towards human conditions. The present chapter traces the evolution of graphic medicine from the historical nexus of comics and medicine, through narrative medicine, to health humanities, and introduces graphic medicine as a cultural alternative to the existing paradigms of medical knowledge. Additionally, this chapter also aims to rationalise the unique aspects and cultural roles of graphic medicine−pedagogical, therapeutic, and community formational.

Affordances, in the context of comics, connote to the general attributes of the medium such as temporality, spatiality, gestures, tone/handwriting and economy. Although comics evinces a dynamic relationship among these elements, it is possible to delineate functional and rhetorical role of these affordances on a conceptual and technical level. Taking these cues, the paper after briefly reviewing the definition and scope of graphic medicine aims to demonstrate the functional and rhetorical role of the aforementioned affordances in communicating illness and illness related experiences. Among other issues this article also seeks to address the following: how do comics engage in the visual and verbal translation of the experiences of chronic illness? how do affordances of comics facilitate the readers' haptic experience of an author's subjective trauma? Despite its juvenile legacy, comics capacitates graphic medicine to represent physical and emotional aspects of narrating subjective illness experiences within the medium. The paper concludes that comics is a uniquely suited communicative medium as it diagrams the interiority of illness experience, and, in the process, evolves itself as a locus of tacit knowledge through its translation and mediation of emotional truths and affective states altered by illness.

An empathetic patient-practitioner relationship has been shown to improve treatment and recovery among patients, and decrease the likelihood of malpractice suits among medical professionals. It is, therefore, puzzling why an empathetic approach to medical education through medical humanities has not been more widely adopted. The interdisciplinary field of medical humanities includes topics such as graphic narrative. Operating from a discourse analytic perspective , this paper presents a dissection of the place of graphic narrative in medical education grounded in the visual semiotic theories of Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001) and Jewitt and Oyama (2001). Graphic medicine is a form of graphic narrative that gives those suffering with, treating, or caring for loved ones with an illness, a form of expression that isn't available through verbal communication. Through semiotic analysis of representational, interpersonal, and com-positional metafunctions of four graphic narratives composed by medical students at Penn State College of Medicine, this paper explores the significance of empathy in the doctor-patient interaction, revealing that an empathetic approach to medicine is valuable to patients and their families, as well as to doctors and medical students, and should be further implemented beginning in medical school. ARTICLE HISTORY

Journal of Medical Humanities, 2019

Comics has always had a critical engagement with socio-political and cultural issues and hence evolved into a medium with a subversive power to challenge the status quo. Staying true to the criticality of the medium, graphic medicine (where comics intersects with the discourse of healthcare) critiques the exploitative and unethical practices in the field of healthcare, thereby creating a critical consciousness in the reader. In close reading select graphic pathographies such as Gabby Schulz's Sick (2016), Emily Steinberg's Broken Eggs (2014), Ellen Forney's Marbles: Mania, Depression , Michelangelo & Me (2012) and Marisa Marchetto's Cancer Vixen (2009), the present article delineates how graphic medicine interrogates the larger than life forces in the field of healthcare. Drawing specific instances from the aforementioned graphic texts, the essay demonstrates that graphic medicine scrutinizes the political economy of health under capitalism. In so doing, the article illustrates how the pharmaceutical corporations, insurance companies, medical technology, and healthcare corporations marketize and commoditize health in the neoliberal era. Finally, the article attempts to theorize how graphic pathographies, mediating subjective experiences, generate a new critical literacy through the conflation of the personal and the political in the verbovisual medium of comics.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2016

Affordances, in the context of comics, connote to the general attributes of the medium such as temporality, spatiality, gestures, tone/handwriting and economy. Although comics evinces a dynamic relationship among these elements, it is possible to delineate functional and rhetorical role of these affordances on a conceptual and technical level. Taking these cues, the paper after briefly reviewing the definition and scope of graphic medicine aims to demonstrate the functional and rhetorical role of the aforementioned affordances in communicating illness and illness related experiences. Among other issues this article also seeks to address the following: how do comics engage in the visual and verbal translation of the experiences of chronic illness? how do affordances of comics facilitate the readers' haptic experience of an author's subjective trauma? Despite its juvenile legacy, comics capacitates graphic medicine to represent physical and emotional aspects of narrating subjective illness experiences within the medium. The paper concludes that comics is a uniquely suited communicative medium as it diagrams the interiority of illness experience, and, in the process, evolves itself as a locus of tacit knowledge through its translation and mediation of emotional truths and affective states altered by illness.

Journal of Medical Humanities - Springer

Effective doctor patient relationships are predicated on doctors' relational engagement and affective/holistic communication with the patients. On the contrary, the contemporary healthcare and patient-clinician communication are at odds with the desirable professional goals, often resulting in dehumanization and demoralization of patients. Besides denigrating the moral agency of a patient such apathetic interactions and unprofessional approach also affect the treatment and well-being of the sufferer. Foregrounding multifaceted doctor-patient relationships , graphic pathographies are a significant cultural resource which recreate the embodied moment of clinical encounters as they also lay bare qualitative tensions between patient' illness experience with doctor's professional understanding of the same. Taking these cues, the present article drawing theoretical postulates of Rita Charon, Deborah Lupton, and Havi Carel close reads Peter Dunlap-Shohl's My Degeneration: A Journey Through Parkinson's (2015), Brian Fies' Mom's Cancer (2006), and Stan Mack's Janet & Me: An Illustrated Story of Love and Loss (2004) to investigate the nature of doctor-patient relationship vis-à-vis communication and the implications of bad doctoring/communicative practices on patient identity and emotions. Furthermore, the article also examines the aesthetic and functional role of comics in bringing into relief the graphically mediated doctor-patient relationship. Effective doctor patient relationships are predicated on doctors' relational engagement and affective/holistic communication with the patients. Specifically, a delicate alignment mostly J Med Humanit https://doi.

Scroll, 2022

Making comics open to the diverse interests of people with disabilities is only limited by imagination and creativity. Technology has pushed the notion of accessibility into new and exciting dimensions. After all, an equitable culture makes the world a better place. This applies to the grand worlds ensconced within the pages of a comic book too.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2021

While there are several studies that focus on care settings in relation to verbal narratives, only a few studies have paid attention to how comics in general, and graphic medicine in particular, engage critical care environments and settings. Drawing strengths from the underground and alternative comics and capitalizing on health humanities, graphic medicine, a recent development in the comics genre, concentrates on the issues related to health, illness, and care. Coined by Ian Williams in 2007, graphic medicine refers to the intersection of comics and concerns of healthcare. Graphic medicine has always engaged informal, formal, and biomedical caregiving settings. Against this backdrop, the present article, drawing on relevant theoretical debates on spatial studies and care, examines Stan Mack's Janet& Me (2004), Joyce Farmer's Special Exits (2014), and Sarah Leavitt's Tangles (2012). In so doing, the article seeks to delineate care facilities (family, hospitals, among others) and their impact on patients.

American Medical Association Journal of Ethics (AMA), 2018

Increasing reliance on statistics for treatment and clinical risk assessment not only leads to the reductive interpretation of disease but also obscures ambiguities, distrust, and profound emotions that are important parts of a patient's lived experience of illness and that should be regarded as clinically and ethically relevant. Enabling critique of the limitations of statistics and illustrating their hegemonic impact on the patient's experience of illness, graphic medicine emerges as a democratic platform where marginalized perspectives on illness experiences are vindicated. Through a close reading of two carer narratives, Mom's Cancer (2006) and Janet & Me: An Illustrated Story of Love and Loss (2004), we illustrate how graphic pathographies represent experiential features of illness that are obscured by overreliance on statistical data. Statistics in Clinics and Comics " Your survival rate is 10%! " the oncologist pronounced after a quick glance at the pathology report of our friend. Although the physician was objectively stating our friend's chances of survival, it had a paralyzing impact on us. Five years has passed since his diagnosis of lung cancer; today, our friend is a successful entrepreneur and a motivational speaker inspiring thousands of cancer patients with his survival saga. In retrospect, the physician's statistical assertion inspired dread in him and all those who were close to him each day. Today, we are relieved that reality was far different from those figures. It was during this span of 5 years of uncertainty that we came across a website called graphicmedicine.org as well as numerous other online sources about illness and survival. The website featured several comics that boldly explored those aspects of illness and health care that physicians and the medical system at large don't convey to patients. The increasing reliance on and ritualistic use of medical statistics for treatment, risk assessment, and other related purposes not only leads to the reductive interpretation of disease but also obscures the ambiguities, distrust, fear, and profound emotions that are important aspects of a patient's lived experience of illness. In Illness as Narrative, Ann Jurecic characterizes such a chasm as " a fundamental incompatibility " 1 between personal experience of illness and statistically mediated measurement. Through critiquing and