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Mother-to-be Kathleen Founds made a routine doctor\u2019s appointment to discuss the risks of antidepressants in pregnancy. After the visit, Founds, who relies on medication to quell the manic highs and despondent lows of bipolar disorder, learned the physician was out of network.<\/p>\n
She received a surprise bill for $650, launching her into a maze of claim forms and hours on the phone being routed from one office to the next to dispute the charges \u2014 insurance red tape that so many Americans have encountered. A decade later, Founds captured her experience in a graphic novel, \u201cBipolar Bear and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Health Insurance,\u201d a richly illustrated, darkly funny fable for adults about the country\u2019s dysfunctional health system.<\/p>\n
The book, published in November, follows Theodore, an intelligent but angst-ridden bear, on his quest for treatment for his own manic-depressive illness. But first he must navigate the demands of the WeCare company, a shady outfit run by cigar-smoking felines who profit unfairly from a lopsided economy and a corrupt justice system, among other things. His fellow outcasts include such characters as an overeducated owl drowning in student debt and a bomb-sniffing puppy suffering from PTSD.<\/p>\n
America is internationally known for high-quality care, for those who can afford it. A new Gallup Poll<\/a> shows that a record-high proportion of Americans \u2014 38% \u2014 postponed medical care because of high costs<\/a> in 2022. Federal<\/a> and state \u201cno surprise\u201d laws<\/a> of the past few years seek to protect consumers from unexpected medical bills. But they don\u2019t prevent expenses like high deductibles or fees<\/a> hidden in the fine print of their insurance policies.<\/p>\n \u201cBipolar Bear\u201d joins other recent works to shine a light on health inequities \u2014 part of the emerging genre of graphic medicine<\/a>. It includes seminal illness narratives<\/a> such as \u201cMom\u2019s Cancer\u201d<\/a> by Brian Fies and nurse MK Czerwiek\u2019s \u201cTaking Turns: Stories from the HIV\/AIDS Care Unit 371<\/a>\u201d as well as \u201cRx,\u201d<\/a> Rachel Lindsay\u2019s memoirs about taking a job at a pharmaceutical company to secure insurance to cover treatment for bipolar disorder.<\/p>\n Descended from the underground comics of the 1960s, graphic medicine has grown into a new field of scholarship<\/a> on the medium\u2019s role in the study and delivery of health care, said Ian Williams, the Welsh physician who coined the term<\/a> back in 2007. \u201cIt\u2019s ideal for exploring subjects having to do with one\u2019s life and well-being in an ironic and funny way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As Founds puts it, humor is a powerful weapon against despair.<\/p>\n The 40-year-old mother of two teaches English at a community college in Santa Cruz County on California\u2019s central coast. She has never taken an art class and didn\u2019t set out to write a graphic novel. The book began as a doodle in the margins of her notebook while studying for a master\u2019s degree in fiction writing at Syracuse University in New York. Her 2014 novel in short stories, \u201cWhen Mystical Creatures Attack,\u201d<\/a> is about a teacher who suffers a nervous breakdown and communicates with her students from a psychiatric hospital.<\/p>\n KHN contributing reporter Rachel Scheier spoke to Founds about bringing Theodore to life. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n Q: How did you come to write a book about a bear with bipolar disorder?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019d been making children\u2019s books for my little brother. They were all about angst-ridden animals: a lonely giant squid, a possum with social anxiety disorder who falls asleep whenever he\u2019s in an awkward situation, a burro who wants to be a unicorn. My goal was to write a novel. But whenever I was too depressed to string a sentence together, I\u2019d draw bears. Then I realized that anyone dealing with a mental health issue in this country is going to have to deal with the labyrinth of health insurance. And I thought it would be fun to depict it as an actual labyrinth with trapdoors and man-eating flowers. Once I went in that direction, it was no longer a children\u2019s book.<\/p>\n Q: Was the book based on your own experience with mental illness?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes. I had my first major depressive episode at the end of high school, but I didn\u2019t seek out professional help. I just sort of muddled through it. Then, when I was a sophomore at Stanford, I had my first manic episode. I had a series of realizations about the nature of the universe, and I didn\u2019t sleep or eat very much. Then, in graduate school, I went to a clinic because I was going through a depression, and the psychiatrist asked me questions like \u201cWas there ever a time when you had a lot of energy and didn\u2019t feel a need to sleep?\u201d And I said, \u201cOh, sure, but that was a spiritual awakening.\u201d So, I had to reframe my life story a bit after that.<\/p>\n Q: But religion still has a role in your life?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m a Quaker. It\u2019s something I came to through my interest in nonviolent social change. When I am severely depressed, I feel like life has no purpose. So, following a code that says life does have meaning, that we are all connected by a force of love that undergirds the universe, is something that has helped me a lot.<\/p>\n Q: Why animals?<\/strong><\/p>\n People are hard to draw! Cartoon animals are a lot easier. I wasn\u2019t interested in art in school \u2014 actually, when I started drawing was during that first manic episode. I do not recommend writing a 200-page graphic novel with no artistic training. I mean, it took 13 years, but I did finish it.<\/p>\n Q: Why did it take so long?<\/strong><\/p>\n I worked on it off and on while I was writing essays and working on the beginnings of several other novels. When I finally finished it, I was so excited. I was ready to see it on bookshelves within a year. I sent it to my agent, and she wrote me a very nice email which said, \u201cI love this. It\u2019s very creative. But there\u2019s no way I can sell it.\u201d Most graphic novels for grownups are memoir \u2014 there wasn\u2019t a clear genre. Then another agent I reached out to said, \u201cI can\u2019t take this on, but you should try Graphic Mundi, which had published several novels in the field of graphic medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n Q: What made you want to write about health insurance?<\/strong><\/p>\n Our system is actually killing people. We have a high suicide rate<\/a> in this country, and people are not able to access mental health care. And then, when they do get help, it\u2019s not necessarily the psychiatrist who determines the course of care; it\u2019s the insurance company. If you go into a room of 10 Americans, five can tell you a health insurance nightmare story.<\/p>\n But I also wanted to explore what it means to develop a healthy lifestyle and grow a strong community and go through all this growth and healing that Bipolar Bear goes through in the story, only to have the depression come back again. What is the meaning of my journey if I find myself right back where I was before? Ultimately, there\u2019s no answer to that question, but there is a right thing to do, which is to ask for help. We\u2019re all saved by each other.<\/p>\n KHN<\/a> (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF<\/a> (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.<\/p>\n This story can be republished for free (details<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n By Rachel Scheier Mother-to-be Kathleen Founds made a routine doctor\u2019s appointment to discuss the risks of antidepressants in pregnancy. After the visit, Founds, who relies on medication to quell the manic highs and despondent lows of bipolar disorder, learned the physician was out of network. She received a surprise bill for $650, launching her into …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[161],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48536"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}USE OUR CONTENT<\/h3>\n
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