Trying to Weather The Storm

Hey Everybody. Just wanted to log a quick entry on my piece for the Los Angeles Times Health page, with design by Joey Santos. One of my favorite problems to illustrate is mental illness. It’s so much better than the flu, or a spiral fracture in your leg, or even malaria (not that I wouldn’t happily and gladly work with any of these topics). Mental illness can be invisible, as far as illustration goes, without the help of a little visual metaphor.

Borderline Personality was especially fun, since in the past it’s been a kind of mental health catch-all. Kind of like hysteria was once upon a time. If you could describe the average person as having a selectively-permeable emotional membrane, you could also say that borderline folks are pretty much permeable, straight through. One can experience extreme anger, depression, anxiety, etc. These rapid and intense shifts can make it impossible for effected persons to maintain consistency in their social lives, in their jobs, long term goals, even within the cores of their identities.

For this particular piece we decided to play up the emotional-environmental sensitivity aspect. Let me know what you think, but more importantly, how the work makes you FEEL.