It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment that mental health awareness moved from private conversations in clinicians’ offices into the cultural conversation. As people began to look up and pay attention, and acknowledged mental health as an important part of overall health, a familiar truth rose to the surface — mental health cannot be separated from issues of race and equity.
I’ve been a journalist for 18 years. I’ve worked in breaking news, narrative writing and multimedia production. I’ve worked as a visiting professor of journalism and senior editor in news, most notably launching The American South, USA Today’s first regional vertical covering enterprise stories across seven states. As an editor, I’ve overseen education, health, environment, immigration, business, arts and culture and sports coverage. I’ve covered many of those topics as a reporter, ranging from immigration and health to education, criminal justice and politics. In the last three years, I’ve launched a global media platform, a U.S.-based health equity initiative for newsrooms and a national media fellowship.
There isn’t a prescriptive “right time” to talk about mental health. Globally, while adults report being in a better place emotionally than the height of the pandemic, people continue to report high stress levels related to work, the economy and global issues. As journalists, finding stories that illuminate those lived experiences becomes an important reflection of our current times. It matters that we share what we’re seeing bubble to the surface not just at times of heightened crisis but continually, as mental health shifts from a niche topic to a more mainstream one. This includes stories about barriers that limit access to mental health treatment, as well as responses that address those issues, especially for communities that have experienced historic trauma and socioeconomic or social disparities.
Mental health equity coverage is important because often when a topic becomes popular, as mental health is now, we run the risk of painting critical issues with broad strokes, and missing the nuance and context that can make these complex stories more meaningful. Our stories have the power to shine a light in dark corners and to ensure that diverse voices are a part of the conversation. Our stories have the power to educate, so we can share, not only the impact of systemic barriers to mental health care but personal stories that can help to reduce shame and stigma around mental health.
One of the key things you will learn in a mental health reporting course from Poynter is how to cover race responsibly. (Sign up here for a free upcoming webinar on this topic.) You’ll also learn about key topics like the social determinants of health — or SDH — and how nonmedical factors affect well-being. Understanding more about these factors will illuminate the ways bias and barriers to mental health care are interconnected. You will discover new threads for story ideas. My hope is that this will inspire you to tell stories beyond your newsroom beat and recognize that mental health is often at the intersection of social issues. This will teach you new strategies for impactful storytelling across beats.
The social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live and age. They include the wider systems shaping the conditions of daily life such as economic policies, development agendas, social norms, social policies and political systems. These all have an important influence on health inequities — the unfair and avoidable differences in health status seen within and between countries and socioeconomic status of communities.
Racism impacts social determinants of health and is itself a determinant of health and health care, according to the National Institutes of Health, which says it “must be acted on as part of a social accountability strategy.” NIH states that social determinants of health represent the most modifiable set of targets for intervention currently available to prevent the onset of mental health problems and disorders, and to promote positive mental health in our populations. “These are not random but manifested by systems and institutions of power that often produce and reproduce intergenerational inequities in peoples opportunities to realize safe and healthy lives.”
So what does this mean for your reporting? As a journalist, one way to understand the effects of discrimination on communities of color or other marginalized groups is to interrogate story ideas and ask: Who will face unequal consequences? There is a natural disaster, such as a hurricane; who will face unequal consequences? There is the collective trauma of police violence in a community or a mass shooting; who will face unequal consequences? Will the aftershock of a social issue be greater or more severe based on ZIP code? Why is that? How could this increase the risk of adverse mental health outcomes? Think about these examples of social determinants of health:— education, housing, labor and income — and ask that question.
Through a yearlong health initiative I led, three Los Angeles Times journalists wrote pieces that explored how mental health stigma plays out in different communities of color, including how some in those communities are effectively responding to that stigma. Jason Armond explored the perspective of Black fathers and produced a story on a father’s journey toward healing and building community. In covering mental health equity you will also come up against cultural conversations. These are important to surface as, NIH says, “cultural differences can influence what treatments, coping mechanisms and supports work for us. It is therefore essential for culture and identity to be a part of the conversation.” In this video production, Karen Garcia talks about her story exploring that kind of integration.
You will also learn about the ripple effects of disparities and how mental health issues can show up through topics such as community disinvestment and displacement or xenophobia, which refers to hostile attitudes or aggressive behavior toward people of other nationalities, ethnic groups, regions, or neighborhoods, states the American Psychological Association. In her story about Japanese mothers banding together to talk about mental illness, reporter Phi Do shared with me that the impetus for the story was thinking about the impact of “Stop Asian Hate” and the many acts of violence during the COVID-19 pandemic on Asian Americans. “Racialized trauma can come directly from other people or can be experienced within a wider system.” This means that people can experience racial trauma themselves or from witnessing others’ mistreatment because of their race.
I have found in my many years of reporting on social issues that framing storytelling as an educational experience propels me to seek more voices. Ida B. Wells said that “there is no greater educator than the press.” I take that to heart. So as we aim to educate about mental health, its challenges, its stigma, its solutions, we can open our audiences up to so much more if we dare to say the quiet thing out loud.
Sign up for Covering Mental Health Equity: A Mental Health Reporting Project Webinar, which takes place at 1 p.m. Eastern on Sept. 9. And learn more about the Mental Health Reporting Project here.