Comic as a tool for managing discomfort and trauma

When we decide to take care of our health and well-being, we have to be aware that we are deciding to protect our body, mind and soul. To achieve this goal, we should focus on seeking to control what is potentially under our control. Nevertheless, sometimes, despite our best efforts, we face with a health crisis and we must try to react and reestablish some kind of control over our life, boosting our resilience. Since we cannot be guaranteed a life free of disease, illness, injury and people as well as situations that have a negative impact on us, we should pay special attention to safeguard certain aspects of our lives. What we mean by control starts with taking care of our mental health and well-being, because both are a priority for health care, and to preserve them we need to know that this is worth fighting for and worth striving for. And, as we have to fight internal enemies (microbes, viruses, out-of-control cells, genetic factors, etc.) and external ones (bad choices, unhealthy habits, negative people and contexts, etc.), no matter who or what motivates us to fight, because, in any case, we have to do it for our sake. Since many years, also comics, graphic novels and fanzines have been dealing with such topics and have proven to be an excellent tool for implementing good health and well-being as well as strengthening resilience. Some of these works express an autobiographical perspective, while others are fictional, but what the latter lose in individual experience they gain by anonymizing and universalizing the topic. In both trends, the authors use the powerful combination of images and text to narrate their experience or a fictional one, treating these situations according to different approaches, from a naturalistic unadorned style to a highly expressionistic or symbolic one, to evoke feelings and sensations. These materials face personal, family and social issues, mental illness, disabilities or impaired physical conditions; others focus on a problematic everyday life which lead to discomfort, stress and also trauma, in the present or as a legacy from the past (individual or collective) that causes distress. Some of these works were created during a personal as well as social crisis (for example, the recent COVID-19 pandemic), as a way of express the problem and coping it. Others, instead, narrate the experience of caring of loved ones suffering such situations. Since wellness is also addressed, some works deal with the discomfort and stress one can experience in daily life or as a result of a traumatic inheritance from the past. Therefore, comics, graphic novels and fanzines demonstrate to be a very effective tool for expressing and elaborating a problem related with good health and well-being and for tackling it, managing the resulting stress, discomfort and trauma. This happens thanks to their potential to represent subjective and collective experience through images and consequently transmit the feelings and emotions arising from them. That is why they are sometimes conceived to help people to express, communicate and share their feelings when they are unable to do it verbally or otherwise, using high-impact visual metaphors or even ellipsis to communicate their experience.