Psychiatric Tales: Eleven Graphic Stories about Mental Illness

By Darryl Cunningham

CW: subjects of mental illness and disorder

In Psychiatric Tales, Darryl Cunningham draws on his time working in a psychiatric hospital to create a reasoned and sympathetic look into the world of mental illness. These stories explore dementia, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and depression, shedding light-in a way that prose alone could not-on what it is like to be mentally ill, and to be wrongly feared and misunderstood because of it. Psychiatric Tales is a groundbreaking graphic work that deftly demythologizes and destigmatizes the disorders that over one quarter of American adults live with every day. Concluding with a reflection on how mental illness has affected Cunningham's own life, Psychiatric Tales is a sometimes harrowing but always deeply humane examination of the trials of the human mind.