RX
A Graphic Memoir
Grand Central, September 2018
A graphic memoir about the treatment of mental illness, treating mental illness as a commodity, and the often unavoidable choice between sanity and happiness.
In her early twenties in New York City, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Rachel Lindsay takes a job in advertising in order to secure healthcare coverage for her treatment. But work takes a strange turn when she is promoted onto the Pfizer account and suddenly finds herself on the other side of the curtain, developing ads for an antidepressant drug. She is the audience of the work she’s been pouring over and it highlights just how unhappy and trapped she feels, stuck in an endless cycle of treatment, insurance and medication.
Overwhelmed by the stress of her professional life and the self-scrutiny it inspires, she begins to destabilize and while in the midst of a crushing job search, her mania takes hold. Her altered mindset yields a simple solution: to quit her job and pursue life as an artist, an identity she had abandoned in exchange for medical treatment. When her parents intervene, she finds herself hospitalized against her will, and stripped of the control she felt she had finally reclaimed. Over the course of her two weeks in the ward, she struggles in the midst of doctors, nurses, patients and endless rules to find a path out of the hospital and this cycle of treatment. One where she can live the life she wants, finding freedom and autonomy, without sacrificing her dreams in order to stay well.
Rachel Lindsay brings antic energy and a light touch to this account of a brief hospitalization for bipolar disorder in her youth. [She] makes bravura use of the comics format with her simple but powerful and expressive cartooning style.
Alison Bechdel, author of FUN HOME, 2014 MacArthur Fellow
“The phenomenon of mental decay is presented in such a blazingly clear and coherent way in Lindsay’s book that I can’t get it out of my head. For anyone with an affection for comics and an interest in ailments of the mind, RX is required reading.”
―Vulture