Mental health has been a recurring subject in comics, particularly for creators working in autobiography and memoir. For artists Gemma Correll and Nicole Georges, it’s also been a subject they’ve explored directly through their own experiences, from anxiety and mental illness to the ways comics can help people feel less alone.
Correll and Georges recently took part in the Boston Comics Arts Foundation’s Picture + Panel: Nervous Laughter event, a conversation about how comics can be used to explore mental health and make difficult experiences easier to understand and share. Correll is the author and illustrator of The Worrier’s Guide to Life and other comics and books about anxiety, while Georges is the author of Calling Dr. Laura and creator of the Emotional Support Animals series.
The conversation took place earlier this month, but the Q&A offers a chance to dig a little deeper into how both creators approach mental health in their work. Correll and Georges discuss how they became interested in mental health, why they began making comics about it, the misconceptions they encounter, and the comics and other media that have influenced their work.
How did you get interested in mental health?
Gemma Correll: I have always been interested in psychology and medicine (a lot of people in my family work in nursing and care) but I’ve also had my own experiences with mental illness — struggling with anxiety since I was quite young (although I did not know that was what it was for many years).
Nicole Georges: When I was in high school, I discovered riot grrl zines — first-person confessional writings about things that otherwise felt unspeakable. Racism, fatphobia, abuse, ableism, and mental health. People wrote about panic attacks and dissociating. The honesty of these publications were both a window and a mirror in different ways and saved my life, and in turn, changed my life, as I wanted to make work to pay forward what the bravery of these girls had given me.
Why did you start making comics about mental health?
Georges: I started drawing autobiographical comics when I was sixteen and mental health was baked into everything from then on. In my book, Calling Dr. Laura (2013), I wrote about my own mother’s mental health as it affected me.
Correll: I have been drawing personal comics and journals in a sketchbook since I was at school and since they were about my own life, I naturally included thoughts and scribbles about the things that were happening and the way I was feeling. I didn’t share any of this work, though, it was just for me. It wasn’t until I got really interested in comics at college and I started to post on social platforms that I started to share some of the drawings online.
How is mental health integrated into your work?
Correll: It’s inextricably linked with my personal work because I’m writing about my own life and mental health is a big part of that.
Georges: In addition to writing honestly about my own life and process, I am illustrating my Emotional Support Animals series, with animals speaking truths I’ve heard or learned through different therapeutic modalities.
What’s your favorite thing about making comics about mental health?
Correll: Connecting with other people. I make art that I hope helps to depict the realities of living with a mental health issue in a way that is easy to understand and, as it is so visual, to share. Mental illness can make you feel very isolated and seeing yourself in someone else’s art, and realizing that you are not completely alone, can be powerful.
Georges: A youth librarian told me she printed out my worksheets and Emotional Support Animals prompts to make a self-care station at her school library for kids who were freaked out after a nearby school shooting and needed a place to ground themselves and feel safe.
What’s your least favorite thing about making comics about mental health?
Correll: People can get upset when I share something and it doesn’t align perfectly with their own experience. This is true for all of my comics, not only the ones about mental health. I only write about the things I have experienced myself — I would never claim to be speaking for “everybody.”
What misconceptions have you found people have about mental health?
Correll: People think that anxiety is just being a bit worried about things — the common thing I hear is that “everybody has anxiety” — which is true. Anxiety is a normal human emotion! There’s a difference between that and an anxiety disorder, though.
Are there other media about mental health that have inspired your work?
Georges: Thich Nhat Hanh.
Correll: I have read a few books about anxiety but I never really found something that fully captured my experience — which is partly because everybody’s experiences are so different, but it’s also because it is so hard to capture entirely in words (and the reason that I wanted to make something visual, to depict the things that are difficult to describe).
Also, anxiety is very much a spectrum and a lot of the media I’ve seen focuses on the less severe end of that spectrum. I really liked the depiction of OCD in the TV show Girls — you could tell that it came from Lena Dunham’s real-life experience. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh was also very inspiring for me, in the way that she is able to somehow make the story of her depression so hilarious.
If you could recommend one other graphic novel about mental health to people who love your work, what would it be (and why)?
Correll: The first graphic novel I read on the subject was Ellen Forney’s Marbles. It’s such a great depiction of living with bipolar disorder and so raw and honest while also being funny and informative. All the things I love in a graphic memoir.
Georges: I do recommend the book Coma, by Zara Slattery.