#BellLetsTalk about journalists’ mental health

Once a year, Canadians rally together to help end the stigma surrounding mental health. #BellLetsTalk trends on social media for 24 hours and we all help fund mental health intiatives. However, it’s easy to forget about the mental wellbeing of yourself and your colleagues for the rest of the year. Today we’ve compiled some of our pieces on journalists and mental health. Use them as reminders today, and for the rest of the year, that the first step to helping end the stigma is by talking about it.

 The War Inside by Nina Boccia
War correspondents can be “Totally fucked up. They can’t face reality. They can’t face the down of not having the adrenaline pump.” An in-depth look at the hidden aftershocks of covering bloody conflicts up close.

Lost in Translation by Soraya Roberts
Reporters have written thousands of words about people with mental illness. Too few of them get inside their heads.

Hard to Swallow by Nataliya Schafer
Should there be media guidelines in Canada for reporting on and discussing eating disorders?

Mental Health: why journalists don’t get help in the workplace by Megan Jones
Reporters are finally telling empathetic stories about depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses, but newsroom culture keeps journalists’ own struggles in the dark.

Suicide Notes by Liam Casey
I contemplated killing myself five years ago. Now, to help others, I call on all journalists to break the silence on our final taboo.

Today, Bell will donate five cents to mental health initiatives for each tweet with #BellLetsTalk, each share of the Facebook image and each text message phone call made by Bell customers.

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by Cormac McGee

Cormac was the blog editor for the 2014-15 issue of the Review. As a fourth year undergraduate at the School of Journalism, he had a keen interest in sports and business writing. He also hosted the Krates Collective hip hop podcast.

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