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Med school honors Trudeau for war strips
May/June 2008
by Melinda Tuhus
©2008 G. B. Trudeau. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicated.
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."
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B.D. lost a leg in the war in Iraq.
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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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