An Honest Portrayal of Depression

On Friday, the front cover of the Globe and Mail caught my attention. In the Arts section, there was an article dedicated to an artist’s online comic that reveals her personal experience with severe depression. I grabbed the Arts section and flew out the door to catch the bus.
The cartoonist is Allie Brosh and the comic is “Hyperbole and a Half.” Allie experienced a severe bout of depression for nineteen months, which left her devoid of pleasure. From this serious illness, Allie has opened up to the world and has attracted millions of viewers each month. She uses the paint software of her Mac to draw her central character, a stick figure with a “shark fin”, as Allie refers to it. To ‘paint’ the depression, Allie has the stick figure where a grubby, grey sweater over a pink dress. Accompanying the brightly coloured comics are raw and descriptive emotions tied to the illness. In her piece titled “Depression Part Two,” she honestly states that “my experiences slowly flattened and blended together until it became obvious that there’s a difference between not giving a f**k and not being able to give a f**k.” Allie makes it clear that someone who is severely depressed is flattened to the point that one cannot express an emotion that is so ‘normal’ for others to express. Beneath this statement are six paintings of her stick figure character with the exact same expression on its face, despite the different events.
Over the course of four years, Allie has painted from her Mac book to shed a very real experience of having depression. It is a space to educate the public, to support those suffering from depression and to help those in recovery see their strengths. Check out www.hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.ca for yourself.