It’s difficult to explain mental illness to those who haven’t experienced it. One in five Americans live with a mental illness and there are more than 200 classified forms. It is too broad and complex to sum up easily in words.



One artist wanted to help others understand, so he decided to draw what cannot be seen.

In his “Real Monsters” series, Toby Allen illustrates different mental illnesses like depression, dissociative identity disorder and social anxiety.

“The project originated from imagining my own anxieties as monsters and finding it to be a cathartic and healing process to draw them,” Allen told Huffington Post. “I wanted to expand upon this idea and draw other representations of mental illnesses that could help people in the same way it helped me.“

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