Op-Ed: Mental Health and Journalists (Kenyan Edition)
September 02, 2024
Good evening beautiful people,
I know we talked earlier today so I will keep this brief. I mentioned in my earlier post that I wrote and pitched two op-eds (opinion pieces). Someone just mentioned that they have read my piece online (this is the quickest turnaround ever). I pitched the piece after 1.15am and it was published less than 24 hours later.
Read the piece on Kenya’s Daily Nation or find it below.
Sending love and light,
Sitawa
On Sunday 1st September, NTV Kenya aired ‘Behind the Byline’, a news feature on the state of mental health in Kenyan media. The feature by Brygette Ngana highlighted the lived experiences of some Kenyan journalists and their family members.
The journalists spoke of their mental health diagnosis, impact on their work and some of their coping mechanisms. A common theme in their narratives was lack of awareness, stigma and lack of workplace mental health support systems. Narratives from family members echoed the first two themes, and the lack of caregiver and family support systems. Both groups agreed that stigma led to isolation which slowed down the recovery process.
These narratives are not unique to the journalists interviewed in the feature. In a 2021 report published by Media Council of Kenya (MCK), 226 journalists out of 332 interviewed (68%) reported to have faced a mental health issue or know a colleague who had faced or is struggling with their mental health.
A similar report by Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma on mental health, well-being and trauma among Canadian media workers showed that this is an international phenomenon. The Canadian report published in 2022 interviewed 1200 Canadian journalists and media workers. 69% of those interviewed self reported to have anxiety while 46% self reported to have depression. The journalists listed the content they had to cover, workload, burnout and fatigue as some of the causes of their mental health decline.
To cope with these factors, some journalists turned to negative coping mechanisms like alcohol, with 26% reporting to be heavy drinkers. Though the MCK report did not report on drug and alcohol use, previous news coverage on various media personalities in Kenya, and their lived experience narratives show the use of alcohol to deal with workplace pressure and societal expectations.
This will help to combat some of the causes mentioned by the journalists interviewed in the NTV Kenya feature and additional ones like minimization of trauma, silent guilt and self doubt that Lydia Ouma mentions in her paper on the unspoken mental health crisis among East African journalists.
Additionally, MCK should ensure that media houses restrict the trauma their journalists and other workers face. This can be done by making sure that they are not asked to cover back to back stories that are triggering to them and that debriefing sessions are held after assignments with a clinical or industrial-organizational psychologist. These sessions will not only help the journalists to process their experiences in the field, but also help media houses to determine what types of assignments are traumatic to who.
Beyond awareness creation sessions and the above mentioned mandates, MCK and media houses should have websites or pages on their employee portals that dedicated mental health support resources. Organizations like the American Press Institute have such pages that provide specific resources for specific issues like reporters in conflict zones, those facing vicarious trauma, or dealing the after effects of covering traumatic events. Similarly, the Reuters mental health and resilience resource provides resources and goes beyond mental health, covering online and sexual harassment, tips on how to handle the death of a colleague and lived experiences by journalists in the network.
One of the journalists interviewed in the NTV feature mentioned the impact of writing opinion pieces and blog posts about his mental health struggles, and how resourceful those articles were to other journalists who were struggling.
As a way to monitor adherence by media houses, MCK can include the state of mental wellbeing as a performance indicator that is reported in its annual review of performance.
To fill in the mental health service provider gap, MCK, the Ministry of Health through the mental health department and Higher Education bodies can create a system that allows psychology and counseling students to get experience and supervision by leading group therapy sessions or one on one debriefing sessions with journalists. This ensures that the country not only has well trained mental health service providers but also takes care of those who are always on to ensure we do not miss out on what is happening around us.
Most of the recommendations given in the MCK report included provision of regular counseling services for journalists. With a scarce mental health workforce in the country, there is a need for a multi-sectoral collaboration between MCK, higher education and media houses. Given that one of MCK’s mandates is to set the standards for professional education and training of journalists, it should ensure that each school offers mandatory courses on mental health first aid including self-care, psychological risks of the job including covering traumatic events, accelerated celebrity status and social expectations.
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