Created at the rate of one page a day for a year, this comic strip retraces the paths taken by the author, Muriel Bros, a midwife in Geneva, to free herself from heavy treatment. She conveys this message of hope: we have unsuspected resources that allow us to free ourselves from the wounds of the past”.
Drawn in humor and sincerity, this testimony entitled ” The color of neuroleptics – Diary of withdrawal », allowed the author to report, but also to bear, the difficulties of drug withdrawal following a psychotic decompensation: she heard voices, always malevolent, at the origin of her treatment with neuroleptics. Since her childhood strewn with trauma in an unloving and abusive family, and despite the sexual abuse of a teacher, Muriel Bros has never stopped drawing, developing great mental strength. Alongside her professional activity, she studied art history at the University of Geneva and ethnology at the University of Neuchâtel.
“My goals in publishing this story are to actively participate in the fight once morest stigma in the field of mental health, by challenging many stereotypes by putting my life into images and text and to allow people with an experience of psychiatrization to access a testimony of withdrawal and other information that might be useful to them”.
The author has put her daily life in bubbles during this very progressive self-weaning from neuroleptics with the precious support of a psychomotor therapist, a psychologist and a psychiatrist. She explains the doses, her tips, but also the thread of her thoughts and her struggles with psychotic symptoms: the reminiscences of a painful past, her family, the days without, her sources of inspiration, her commitments and her work.
« Reducing or even stopping neuroleptic treatment is exactly in line with the concept of recovery where the patient is at the heart of his care, his treatment and, in a broader sense, is in control of his life”.
• The color of neuroleptics – Diary of withdrawal, Muriel Bros, Editions planet health, 2023; 35,00 CHF.
