In 2018, award-winning cartoonist, writer, and illustrator Gemma Correll, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Elle, and Forbes, experienced a panic attack that lasted for weeks. Years later, that experience became the foundation for “Anxietyland”, a graphic memoir that transforms the internal world of anxiety and depression into an amusement park filled with surreal attractions and uncomfortable realities.
Using her trademark illustrations and dry, self-aware humor, Correll explores severe anxiety, depression, agoraphobia, panic attacks, and dissociation, including the ways they can affect both the mind and body. The result can be funny, unsettling, and deeply candid, offering an unconventional look at what it means to navigate mental health without pretending there is a simple solution.
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The book is Correll’s first full-length graphic memoir and was published by Gallery Books in the U.S. on April 28, 2026. Across its 448 pages, she looks back at a lifelong struggle with anxiety and depression, including agoraphobia, panic attacks, dissociation, and examines how these issues gradually began to shape her adult life.
The story opens with an especially intense panic attack that led her to check herself into a hospital, before moving through memories of her childhood and young adulthood, periods of claustrophobia and her attempts to push beyond the limitations that fear had placed on her. Rather than presenting a straightforward path to feeling better, Correll uses the fictional amusement park of “Anxietyland” to show how unpredictable the process can be, filling it with attractions such as the Worry-Go-Round, Control Freak Show, Depression Obstacle, and Parade of Therapists.
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Correll has explained that she wanted to create the kind of book she would have found useful when she was younger, particularly because she struggled to find mental-health books that captured the physical side of anxiety as well as the psychological one. She also wanted to show that anxiety exists on a spectrum, rather than presenting only its most familiar or easily recognizable forms. By combining candid storytelling with her distinctive, playful illustrations, she gives readers a visual language for feelings that can be difficult to put into words.
“I try to make the ups and downs of dealing with mental health relatable and easy to understand, while also bringing some humor and levity to it all,” the artist shared in an interview with Bored Panda.
At its heart, “Anxietyland” isn’t about reaching a point where anxiety simply disappears. Instead, Correll explores what it means to recognize these feelings, understand how they affect you, find ways of managing them, and gradually become more comfortable with uncertainty. The amusement park becomes less a place to escape from and more a metaphor for learning how to navigate life when difficult feelings remain part of the landscape.
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