Unravelling Graphic Medicine: Intersection of the Medium of Comics and Healthcare

Abstract

Graphic medicine as an offshoot of health humanities focuses on the ‘intersection of the medium of comics and healthcare’ to capture the psychological, emotional and socio-cultural dimensions of illness through a blend of visual and verbal elements. It challenges the existing biomedical discourse by giving voice to the hitherto excluded community which includes patients, caregivers, doctors and other healthcare workers. Thus, graphic medicine as an emerging discourse in health humanities not only emphasizes the immense possibility of the comic medium and its intersection with healthcare but also the subjective experiences of deliberately marginalized communities as well. This paper aims to examine the role of graphic medicine as a discourse that challenges and enriches the dominant biomedical discourse to communicate the complex and ambiguous experience of illness through verbo-visual elements.