California Author Uses Dark Humor — And a Bear — To Highlight Flawed Health 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 remedy to quell the manic highs and despondent lows of bipolar dysfunction, discovered the doctor was out of community.

She obtained a shock invoice for $650, launching her right into a maze of declare types and hours on the cellphone being routed from one workplace to the following to dispute the costs — insurance coverage crimson tape that so many People 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 e-book, printed in November, follows Theodore, an clever however angst-ridden bear, on his quest for remedy 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 embrace such characters as an overeducated owl drowning in pupil debt and a bomb-sniffing pet affected by PTSD.

America is internationally recognized for high-quality care, for many who can afford it. A brand new Gallup Ballot reveals {that a} record-high proportion of People — 38% — postponed medical care due to excessive prices in 2022. Federal and state “no shock” legal guidelines of the previous few years search to guard shoppers from sudden medical payments. However they don’t stop bills like excessive deductibles or charges hidden within the advantageous 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 medication. It consists of seminal sickness narratives equivalent to “Mother’s Most cancers” by Brian Fies and nurse MK Czerwiek’s “Taking Turns: Tales 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 remedy for bipolar dysfunction.

Descended from the underground comics of the Nineteen Sixties, graphic medication has grown into a brand new subject of scholarship on the medium’s position within the research and supply of well being care, mentioned Ian Williams, the Welsh doctor who coined the time period again in 2007. “It’s excellent for exploring topics having to do with one’s life and well-being in an ironic and humorous method,” he mentioned.

As Founds places it, humor is a strong 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 didn’t got down to write a graphic novel. The e-book 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 in brief tales, “When Mystical Creatures Assault,” is a few trainer who suffers a nervous breakdown and communicates together 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 e-book a few bear with bipolar dysfunction?

I’d been making youngsters’s books for my little brother. They had been all about angst-ridden animals: a lonely large squid, a possum with social anxiousness dysfunction who falls asleep each time he’s in an ungainly state of affairs, a burro who needs to be a unicorn. My objective was to write down a novel. However each time I used to be too depressed to string a sentence collectively, I’d draw bears. Then I noticed that anybody coping with a psychological well being challenge on this nation goes to should cope with the labyrinth of medical health insurance. And I believed it will be enjoyable to depict it as an precise labyrinth with trapdoors and man-eating flowers. As soon as I went in that path, it was now not a youngsters’s e-book.

Q: Was the e-book primarily based by yourself expertise with psychological sickness?

Sure. I had my first main depressive episode on the finish of highschool, however I didn’t hunt down skilled assist. I simply kind of muddled via it. Then, after I was a sophomore at Stanford, I had my first manic episode. I had a sequence of realizations in regards to the nature of the universe, and I didn’t 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 despair, and the psychiatrist requested me questions like “Was there ever a time while you had plenty of vitality and didn’t really feel a have to sleep?” And I mentioned, “Oh, positive, 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’m a Quaker. It’s 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 linked by a pressure of affection that undergirds the universe, is one thing that has helped me so much.

Q: Why animals?

Persons are arduous to attract! Cartoon animals are so much simpler. I wasn’t excited by artwork in class — really, after I began drawing was throughout that first manic episode. I don’t suggest writing a 200-page graphic novel with no inventive 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 she or he wrote me a really good e mail which mentioned, “I like this. It’s very artistic. However there’s no method 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 mentioned, “I can’t take this on, however you need to attempt Graphic Mundi, which had printed a number of novels within the subject of graphic medication.”

Q: What made you wish to write about medical health insurance?

Our system is definitely killing individuals. We have now a excessive suicide fee on this nation, and persons are not capable of entry psychological well being care. After which, once they do get assist, it’s not essentially the psychiatrist who determines the course of care; it’s the insurance coverage firm. For those who go right into a room of 10 People, 5 can inform you a medical health 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 despair 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? Finally, there’s no 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 unbiased service of the California Well being Care Basis.

KHN (Kaiser Well being Information) is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points. Along with Coverage Evaluation and Polling, KHN is without doubt one of the three main working packages at KFF (Kaiser Household Basis). KFF is an endowed nonprofit group offering info on well being points to the nation.

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