Creating Comics to Address Well-Being and Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In this descriptive case series, we detail the theoretical basis, methodology, and impact of a small-scale pilot implementation of graphic medicine workshops as an innovative approach to well-being and resilience in the age of COVID-19 and increasing awareness of racial injustice. The data provided in this article are anecdotal and based on participation in the workshops. Images created during the workshops are also shared as examples of the types of reflection that graphic medicine can enable. The workshops themselves were designed collaboratively and are based on the theoretical principles of graphic medicine, narrative medicine, and racial and social justice. They were conducted as part of a larger wellness initiative and were offered to health care-focused faculty at our academic medical institution. Our findings suggest that this was a beneficial activity which helped participants to reflect and reconsider their experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic and surging awareness of racial injustice. Reflections also showed that drawings were correlated with ProQOL scores and may, in larger numbers, also help to mitigate or bring attention to issues of burnout in frontline providers. Drawings shared show the tremendous impact of COVID-19 and the simultaneous chaos and emptiness of practicing during dual pandemics. Our workshops engaged about 20 frontline health care providers and other health care faculty and highlight the utility of graphic medicine as a tool for building resilience and encouraging self-reflection. Further study is necessary, as is more rigorous analysis of the relationship between the graphics created and the ability to recognize and mitigate burnout.

Spaces of Care and Graphic Medicine

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.

Comics in and of the Moment. The COVID19 pandemic: a graphic narrative.

ABSTRACT FOR GRAPHIC SUBMISSION TO:“COMICS IN AND OF THE MOMENT”. THE COMICS GRIDMónica LalandaBack in March 2020, when it became obvious that we were heading a big global disaster, I created a folder called Coronavirus Graphic Medicine. Since it was a unprecedented health care crisis, I expected a huge amount of art material related directly to the illness, the symptoms, the medical care, tests, treatments…I saw it as a great oportunity to confirm the use of such fabulous communication tool. Everytime I came accross a comic, infographic or cartoon in social media (mostly twitter and Instagram), I’d save it in my folder. I concentrated on work created in spanish but also foreign ones without any text.Within weeks, I was already surprised that the amount of graphic outpour was huge but there was little in terms of “proper” graphic medicine. As I continued to look into it in more detail, analysing all these amazing pieces, I could see that the illness itself was not the main character of the story, the protagonists of the covid-19 crisis were not the patients or the disease. It was clear that there was little contact with the patients, either locked in ther own rooms or in hospitals with no visitors. Covid-19 victims were surprisingly not the real issue. This in itself is very meaningful. .The illustrators also drew a lot about death but little about the dead ones, creamated without witnesses and buried almost in solitute . As the vignettes continued to enter my folder, I could see that somehow they were able to give an amazing narrative of the pandemia, there was hardly any graphic medicine but more of a story about a whole society going through a unique and damaging common experience. A kind of social graphic medicine of some sort. The suffering of a whole society rather than the illness of the individuals.They fitted into various themes that were obviouly catching the artists’ imagination. In my on-going analysis I ended up creating subfolders that allowed me to clasify and study them in a more logical way. These were the issues that gave way to more pieces:- Health care providers as heroes- Health care providers as victims of the system- Coping with the confinement.- The virus itself (anthopromorphism)- Death- “The curve”- Face masks- Timely themes (schools, Halloween, christmas…)- Information for people to avoid illness- vaccinesNow that things have settled, there is a new and different creation with a kind of retrospective eye. Yet again graphic medicine as such is missing. I’ve recently being invited to write the introduction of an anthology of comics about the pandemia where some of the best spanish comic creators have produced their own pieces about covid19. I notice a tendency to search for answers, to look into our society and our communities with some queries, to measure the effect of social inequalities or the importance of belonging, there is a concern about the psicological effect of those deaths that we were not allowed to mourn, the oportunity to value small things that we never noticed before. I almost sense a call to forget the ugly and to rebuild a new society upon the old ashes. It’s surprising the change in tone. Deep pesimism mixed with cheerful expectations.I’d like to create a comic reflecting on the analysis of all those hundreds of cartoons and comics that I’ve been looking at for over a year.My own work during the pandemia has been mostly graphic medicine as such and here is a link to some of it:https://monicalalanda.com/