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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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Med school honors Trudeau for war strips
Combat flashbacks, nightmares, and marital troubles—not the kind of thing to give you a laugh over breakfast. “These aren’t funny topics,” said Dr. John Krystal '84MD. “But somehow, humor makes them accessible, and by being accessible, makes them useful and important.” Krystal, the deputy chair for research in the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, was talking about the comic strip Doonesbury, which has for the last five years featured the adjustment challenges faced by U.S. soldiers and marines returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. In recognition of this effort, the medical school gave its annual Mental Health Research Advocacy Award to Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau '70, '73MFA, on April 5. The brief ceremony came at the beginning of a half-day symposium entitled “Stress, Resilience, and Recovery.” In the strip, Trudeau has chronicled the efforts of
B.D., one of the central characters, to deal with post-traumatic stress
disorder after losing a leg in the war in Iraq. In accepting the award, Trudeau
explained why he took up the issue. “Just as a classic therapy strategy
for trauma victims is to get them to revisit tormenting ideas and events and
reframe them, to diminish their power to harm,” said Trudeau, “it
seems important to be part of an effort to detoxify the psychological wounds of
war by increasing public awareness of them.” |
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©1992–2012, Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Yale Alumni Magazine, P.O. Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905, USA. yam@yale.edu |
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