As the SoE prepares to hear from editors and journalists on mental wellbeing for its first conference debate ‘Mental Health in the Newsroom’, readers can submit responses to a survey which aims to understand the mental health issues that journalists can face.

The survey is distributed on behalf of Gabriella Tyson, a PhD researcher at the University of Oxford, who is currently studying PTSD and mental health in the journalism sector with Dr Jennifer Wild and Professor Anke Ehlers.

Gabriella said:

“In the mental health research field we know journalists have higher than average rates of PTSD and are much more likely to be exposed to traumatic events than the general public. Based on this, the overall aim and unique perspective of my PhD is to try and translate some of the prevention work we’ve previously done with the emergency services into something for those working in the media sector. The main overall aim is to create resources to teach techniques that we know can help prevent the development of PTSD.

“That is where this survey comes in. In order for any training that is developed to be relevant and specific for the journalism field, I am trying to gather a large, up-to-date data set from those working in the profession to ascertain things like: which groups of PTSD symptom affect them the most, what thinking styles are most prevalent that we could try and address,  what resilience strategies are journalists already putting in place, and what types of training might be most useful. From this I can start working on the next stage of developing a preventative/resilience-focused program for journalists.

“The survey is anonymised, you will be asked to enter your email address at the beginning for consent purposes, but this will not be stored with your answers once the survey is completed. This makes it completely confidential and definitely won’t be shared with your employer or anyone else.”

The 15 minute survey can be found here bit.ly/journalistsurvey or on Gabriella’s website www.journostress.com.  

In the meantime, you can register for the upcoming Mental Health in the Newsroom debate to take place on Tuesday 10 November at 6pm here – https://www.crowdcast.io/e/8roik5zg/register