‘Fog of Medication’: psychiatric drugs, neurochemical selves, and graphic medicine

Abstract

ABSTRACT The mental illness narratives in graphic medicine navigate us through the experience of the patients and caregivers and complement the clinical perspective. These illness narratives showcase distinct challenges the patients face through the various phases such as diagnosis and treatment, including medication and institutionalisation. The neoliberal market advances in medicine have promoted indiscriminate commercialisation in healthcare. As the medical speciality dealing with mental illnesses, psychiatry’s increasing affiliation to chemical cure has realigned the treatment system in the latter half of the twentieth century towards increased pharmaceutical consumption. Graphic pathographies, Clem Martini and Olivier Martini’s Bitter Medicine, Rachel Lindsay’s Rx, and Tatiana Gill’s Head Meds and Other Stories explore the experiential aspects of mental illness emphasising the authors’ predicament with psychiatric drugs. Drawing theoretical insights of Nikolas Rose and Elizabeth Freudenthal, this research article examines the impact of relentless commercialisation of pharmaceuticals and its impact on individuals with mental illness as visually deliberated in the above graphic memoirs. By closely reading several instances from the texts, the present article highlights the complex networks of biomedicine, commercialisation, and contested selfhood.