Gemma Correll has lived with what she calls The Bad Feeling since childhood. In Anxietyland, the cartoonist draws her anxiety and depression as a ride through an amusement park inside her own mind.
Readical Key Points
- A graphic memoir of lifelong anxiety and depression, written and drawn by cartoonist Gemma Correll
- A national bestseller and a Junior Library Guild Selection, according to the publisher
- Reviewed in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist and Kirkus Reviews
- Content note: severe anxiety, panic attacks, depression, agoraphobia, dissociation and a hospital stay
- Hardcover from Gallery Books, 2026; 448 pages
The book turns on 2018, when a panic attack went on for weeks and Correll, barely able to do more than wander the streets of Berkeley, admitted herself to a hospital. Around that episode she maps anxiety, depression, agoraphobia and dissociation as attractions in a park she cannot quite leave, paying close attention to how anxiety lives in the body as well as the mind. The drawings keep jokes and asides running alongside the hardest material.
Readers who live with anxiety or depression, and people trying to understand someone who does, will find a personal account told with humor. It is one person's experience, not a treatment guide, and it promises no cure. Correll never finds the exit from the park. She finds ways to keep moving through it.
About the Author
Gemma Correll, an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator, has had her work published in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Elle and Forbes and featured by NPR. She has made Mental Health America's social media campaign for Mental Health Awareness Month every year since 2016.
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