'The depressions were certainly more painful for me to experience and for friends and loved ones to witness,' Forney says. The combination of words and drawings turned out to be a powerful medium for exploring manic depression, with cartoons representing the emotional extremes which words seldom seem to do justice to. When you go public and talk about something openly, you have no control over how people may react.'įortunately, the response in the US, where her book was first published, has been overwhelmingly positive. I needed to believe that revisiting the most acute phases of my illness wouldn't be too traumatic, and also that I could cope with the reception – good or bad – of writing about it. So I didn't want to start work on something so sensitive and personal until I'd had some time to trust my recovery. 'Even when I'm feeling OK, I have a nagging sense I might be on borrowed time. 'Like most people with a mental illness, I'm only too aware of the fragility of my emotional state,' she says.

Though, as Forney admits: 'By definition I was mentally ill, so perhaps I wasn't always the most rational of judges.'įorney had the idea for the book for some time, but held off writing and drawing until she was sure that she could cope with the consequences. Her book, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo & Me, is an unflinching and frequently unforgiving narrative of what it means to have bipolar disorder and how treatment can often seem more terrifying than the illness itself.

Ellen forney books