the psychiatric superhero

The illustrated Novel ‘The Divine Madman Superhero’ is the culmination of 12 years’ work for mythical surrealist painter and storyteller James de Blas. This mental health fantasy is realised through his interweaving of 60, 122cm x 92cm oil paintings with text, to tell the story of a mythological mental health journey in illustrated novel form. Through sharing his story, he seeks to inform those who face mental health challenges, those who work with them and the wider public. This work is of particular interest to people with shared experience and those who work outside mainstream medical approaches to schizophrenia. Groups such as the Hearing Voices Movement, Open Dialogue, the Soteria Project, The Icarus Project, and the Mad Studies course at Ryerson University, Canada, amongst many others, present fertile ground for an affordable version of this illustrated novel.