The Japanese Gallery of Psychiatric Art

Psycho-delic

Check out these surreal images from Japanese psychiatric medication advertisements, 1956-2003. It seems the symptoms the medications were designed to cure were illustrated, usually symbolically, on the packaging -- which I'm sure was the most fun the commercial illustrators for these products ever had on the job. The images depict (I assume) depression, paranoia, anxiety and schizophrenia, but also bliss. Surrealism seems to be the preferred visual style for conveying mental states all around the world, although abstraction, psychedelia, conventional illustration, sculpture and noirish photography are also represented here. The most disturbing image, however, is a simple photo of a woman wearing an "Electric Hypnotic Machine."