Author talk illustrates the connection between doodling and mental health

Doodling on a drawing pad for an audience of eighth graders, Cara Bean transformed a free-handed squiggle into a man, set with a full head of hair, a mustache and a goatee.

This demonstration was part of an author visit on Thursday, Oct. 23 and Friday, Oct. 24 at Dartmouth Middle School, when Bean talked with students about her book “Here I am, I am Me” and how doodling can help manage stress.

“Here I am, I am Me,” is a comic book about mental health that’s geared toward helping kids and young adults understand what can often be a difficult topic to grasp.

“I want to keep using drawing as a way to connect to mental health in a very unobtrusive, non-threatening way to bring up the conversation but keep our hands busy and keep it fun,” Bean said.

Eighth grader Bella Valente called the drawing relaxing and enjoyed learning about the science behind mental health.

“We learned about our brain and chemicals and things that are inside of us … and the science behind it,” she said. “I thought that was pretty cool.”

Bean’s visit to Dartmouth Middle School was made possible with a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

“We’re just so excited to have an opportunity for kids to do some mindful drawing and get a chance to tap into that creative side … and also do a little bit of thinking about how that can help them cope with stress,” said middle school librarian Laura Gardner.

After doodling on scrap pieces of paper, turning squiggles into creatures, Bean gave the students each a slip of paper for them to draw whatever they wanted. At the end of the author talk, Bean laid every square together to create a mural for the school’s wall.

Bean first thought about how to handle the mental health needs of young adults when she was a high school art teacher and students would come to her for help or advice. She realized at the time that she didn’t have the knowledge on how to best help them.

“I was trying to teach and grade and do teacher things, but the emotional stuff would come up, and then I was like, ‘What do I do about this?’” Bean said.

She noted that this seemed to be a common occurrence for many humanities educators, who often teach subjects that can draw out emotions.

“That stuff’s going to flow out of these kids and we’re doing to know about it,” she said. “And how do we support them? And what’s the appropriate way?

Bean’s author journey began about 10 years ago when she first published a zine about notes she took during trainings about mental health.

“I was in the comics community and one of my cartoonist friends shared it on Facebook … and an editor saw it and was like ‘this would be really good for kids,’” she said.

At the time, Bean was a full-time art teacher, but at the prospect of having a chance to take her comics more seriously and address kids’ mental health needs, she took a year off.

She recalled thinking that by taking a year off she would have an opportunity to speak directly to kids about mental health through her cartoons.

“Especially with cartooning, you can get away with metaphors and humor and lots of ways to soften difficult things or break down complex information into bite-sized pieces,” Bean said.

What originally began as a one year long project quickly morphed into six years as the process became harder than she had thought it was going to be.

During the writing and illustrating process Bean partnered with therapists, neuroscientists and addiction specialists, drawing pages based on the information and feedback they gave her, including illustrating stress as a monster.

“This book is a collaboration, and I feel like so many brilliant people from an editing, publishing, reader standpoint and then also from the sciences and psychology,” Bean said.

Bean called “Here I am, I am Me” “truly the book I wanted.”

“This is what I wanted, so I made it for the little kid in me that was telling me about this stuff,” she said.