TED Health Interview: Grief is complicated — but drawing cartoons can help with Dr. Nathan Gray
Dec 2, 2025
Dr. Nathan Gray, a palliative care physician and cartoonist from Johns Hopkins, discusses the intersection of art and medicine. He highlights how comics can reveal emotional truths and foster communication in healthcare. Nathan shares his experiences using art to process clinical challenges and moral distress. The conversation dives into balancing empathy and professional boundaries while maintaining patient dignity. He also talks about the importance of integrating creativity into medical training to enhance resilience and understanding.
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Drawing To Preserve A Memory
- Navid Mahdavian drew his grandmother's hands to preserve a sensory memory when she was dying.
- He used his own hands as reference and transformed into her to deepen empathy and process grief.
Details Reveal Whole People
- Cartooning lets you zoom into emblematic details that reveal a whole person.
- That narrow focus prevents flattening the deceased into caricature and enables fuller grief.
Art Unlocks Nonverbal Truths
- Drawing accesses nonverbal, emotional material that words often miss.
- Nathan Gray uses art to bring hospital stories to life and externalize difficult feelings.