California creator makes use of darkish humor — and a bear — to focus on flawed well being system
Mom-to-be Kathleen Founds made a routine physician’s appointment to debate the dangers of antidepressants in being pregnant. After the go to, Founds, who depends on treatment to quell the manic highs and despondent lows of bipolar dysfunction, realized the doctor was out of community.
She obtained a shock invoice for $650, launching her right into a maze of declare varieties and hours on the telephone being routed from one workplace to the following to dispute the costs — insurance coverage pink tape that so many Individuals have encountered. A decade later, Founds captured her expertise in a graphic novel, “Bipolar Bear and the Horrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Dangerous Well being Insurance coverage,” a richly illustrated, darkly humorous fable for adults in regards to the nation’s dysfunctional well being system.
The guide, printed in November, follows Theodore, an clever however angst-ridden bear, on his quest for therapy for his personal manic-depressive sickness. However first he should navigate the calls for of the WeCare firm, a shady outfit run by cigar-smoking felines who revenue unfairly from a lopsided financial system and a corrupt justice system, amongst different issues. His fellow outcasts embody such characters as an overeducated owl drowning in scholar debt and a bomb-sniffing pet affected by PTSD.
America is internationally identified for high-quality care, for individuals who can afford it. A brand new Gallup Poll reveals {that a} record-high proportion of Individuals — 38% — postponed medical care due to high costs in 2022. Federal and state “no surprise” laws of the previous few years search to guard shoppers from sudden medical payments. However they do not forestall expenses like high deductibles or fees hidden within the superb print of their insurance coverage insurance policies.
“Bipolar Bear” joins different latest works to shine a light-weight on well being inequities — a part of the rising style of graphic medicine. It contains seminal illness narratives akin to “Mom’s Cancer” by Brian Fies and nurse MK Czerwiek’s “Taking Turns: Stories from the HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371” in addition to “Rx,” Rachel Lindsay’s memoirs about taking a job at a pharmaceutical firm to safe insurance coverage to cowl therapy for bipolar dysfunction.
Descended from the underground comics of the Sixties, graphic drugs has grown into a brand new field of scholarship on the medium’s function within the examine and supply of well being care, stated Ian Williams, the Welsh doctor who coined the term again in 2007. “It is ultimate for exploring topics having to do with one’s life and well-being in an ironic and humorous approach,” he stated.
As Founds places it, humor is a robust weapon in opposition to despair.
The 40-year-old mom of two teaches English at a neighborhood faculty in Santa Cruz County on California’s central coast. She has by no means taken an artwork class and did not got down to write a graphic novel. The guide started as a doodle within the margins of her pocket book whereas finding out for a grasp’s diploma in fiction writing at Syracuse College in New York. Her 2014 novel briefly tales, “When Mystical Creatures Attack,” is a few trainer who suffers a nervous breakdown and communicates along with her college students from a psychiatric hospital.
KHN contributing reporter Rachel Scheier spoke to Founds about bringing Theodore to life. The interview has been edited for size and readability.
Q: How did you come to write down a guide a few bear with bipolar dysfunction?
I might been making youngsters’s books for my little brother. They had been all about angst-ridden animals: a lonely big squid, a possum with social anxiousness dysfunction who falls asleep each time he is in a clumsy state of affairs, a burro who desires to be a unicorn. My purpose was to write down a novel. However each time I used to be too depressed to string a sentence collectively, I might draw bears. Then I spotted that anybody coping with a psychological well being difficulty on this nation goes to need to take care of the labyrinth of medical insurance. And I believed it might be enjoyable to depict it as an precise labyrinth with trapdoors and man-eating flowers. As soon as I went in that route, it was not a youngsters’s guide.
Q: Was the guide based mostly by yourself expertise with psychological sickness?
Sure. I had my first main depressive episode on the finish of highschool, however I did not hunt down skilled assist. I simply type of muddled via it. Then, once I was a sophomore at Stanford, I had my first manic episode. I had a collection of realizations in regards to the nature of the universe, and I did not sleep or eat very a lot. Then, in graduate faculty, I went to a clinic as a result of I used to be going via a melancholy, and the psychiatrist requested me questions like “Was there ever a time once you had a whole lot of vitality and did not really feel a have to sleep?” And I stated, “Oh, certain, however that was a religious awakening.” So, I needed to reframe my life story a bit after that.
Q: However faith nonetheless has a task in your life?
I am a Quaker. It is one thing I got here to via my curiosity in nonviolent social change. When I’m severely depressed, I really feel like life has no objective. So, following a code that claims life does have which means, that we’re all related by a power of affection that undergirds the universe, is one thing that has helped me so much.
Q: Why animals?
Individuals are exhausting to attract! Cartoon animals are so much simpler. I wasn’t all in favour of artwork in class — really, once I began drawing was throughout that first manic episode. I don’t advocate writing a 200-page graphic novel with no creative coaching. I imply, it took 13 years, however I did end it.
Q: Why did it take so lengthy?
I labored on it on and off whereas I used to be writing essays and dealing on the beginnings of a number of different novels. Once I lastly completed it, I used to be so excited. I used to be able to see it on bookshelves inside a 12 months. I despatched it to my agent, and he or she wrote me a really good electronic mail which stated, “I like this. It is very artistic. However there is not any approach I can promote it.” Most graphic novels for grownups are memoir — there wasn’t a transparent style. Then one other agent I reached out to stated, “I am unable to take this on, however you must attempt Graphic Mundi, which had printed a number of novels within the discipline of graphic drugs.”
Q: What made you wish to write about medical insurance?
Our system is definitely killing folks. We’ve a high suicide rate on this nation, and individuals are not capable of entry psychological well being care. After which, after they do get assist, it is not essentially the psychiatrist who determines the course of care; it is the insurance coverage firm. Should you go right into a room of 10 Individuals, 5 can let you know a medical insurance nightmare story.
However I additionally needed to discover what it means to develop a wholesome way of life and develop a robust neighborhood and undergo all this development and therapeutic that Bipolar Bear goes via within the story, solely to have the melancholy come again once more. What’s the which means of my journey if I discover myself proper again the place I used to be earlier than? In the end, there is not any reply to that query, however there’s a proper factor to do, which is to ask for assist. We’re all saved by one another.
This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially impartial service of the California Health Care Foundation.
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