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Bitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness by Clem & Olivier Martini

The significance of the title Bitter Medicine is refering to the bitter feeling those dealing with mental illness feel about the government failure in helping them. Those with mental illness in this case Olivier and Ben Martini have been left on the waste side to figure it out and to find their own way back into society. Also the fact that Olivier tries so many different types of employment and prescribed medication that may also have significance in the choosing of Bitter Medicine. A lot of the prescriptions were giving Olivier bad side effects unable to feel emotions, completely blank, gave me problems eating or speaking or having any kind of motivation at all.

A quote on page 245 of Bitter Medicine shined some light on the bitterness that Clem feels for schizophrenia but also how it has given him new lessons that he would never had learned.

"Since then, I've learned other things. I've come to understand that schizophrenia takes things. It seizes people. It confiscates relationships. It snatches peace of mind and slips it away in some deep, secret, interior pocket. It takes so much, in fact, that at times it seems insatiable. It seems it will consume everything. Only later do you discover that schizophrenia gives things back too". (Martini, 245)

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=Bitter Medicine =

Clem Martini and Olivier Martini (Freehand)
by Sean Flinn Two of Clem Martini's brothers have been diagnosed with schizophrenia. One is Ben, the youngest. The other is Olivier, or Liv, an artist. He illustrates this graphic memoir with a subtle hand. Spend time following the lines in his black ink drawings and his short, considered captions. This is his side in a long conversation, spanning some 30 years, with his brother Clem, a Calgary playwright. They revisit the early onset, the behavioural manifestations, diagnosis, deinstitutionalization and other detours and dead-ends in the health care system, drug effects (good and bad) and suicide: this latter subject is approached head-on and with heads on straight. There's no fixation on how it's done, but rather, and most importantly, how a life arrives at that breaking point and what simple preventative methods (two brothers routinely walking and talking together, for one) may help. These guys speak honestly to each other and about the others in their lives. Clem describes their father as a "short, bald, rather formal man who regretted every decision he'd ever made." That includes coming to Canada. Liv responds with a portrait of their father sitting, elbows on knees. The caption reads: "My Dad was an unhappy man. Tout est perdu au Canada." Much is lost because of mental illness. With books like Bitter Medicine, much is gained.

This is a review taken from The Coast a new webpage in Halifax, NS.

http://calgary.ctvnews.ca/real-youth-delivers-bitter-medicine-1.946973

This video link is a video discussion the books distribution to 1st year students at University of Calgary promoting students to discuss the topic of mental illness.

Have you encountered someone with a mental illness? Yes No

Anna Garcia Ambler

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