Climate reporters in the Global South are more exposed to mental health risks with much less support, suggests new research

Climate journalists from Africa and Asia both faced greater risks to their mental health and were less likely to receive psychotherapy than European journalists, according to a recent research paper published in December. 

The article, led by researchers Dr Anthony Feinstein and Jillian Mead, recruited participants from the Reuters Institute’s Oxford Climate Journalist Network (OCJN) and was co-authored by former OCJN colleagues Diego Arguedas Ortiz, Greg Cochrane and Katherine Dunn, as well as our director, Mitali Mukherjee. 

In May, Feinstein presented preliminary findings from the report’s survey of climate journalists in an event hosted by the OCJN. Over half the sample of 268 journalists covering climate change from 90 countries on five continents said they do not have access to resources supporting mental and physical health. 

Some of the findings are striking. Around 30% were directly impacted by climate change, such as through the loss of a family member, friend or home. Almost half reported moderate to severe symptoms of anxiety (48%) and depression (42 %). Around one in five journalists (22%) reported prominent symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Analysis of regional differences carried out after this event found that Global South journalists fared worse than their European counterparts when it came to feeling physically threatened, having lost a friend or family member to climate change, and in measures relating to PTSD. They were also less likely to receive psychotherapy. 

I spoke to Feinstein to put these findings into a broader context and ask what journalists and newsrooms can do differently. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q. What were the main differences you found in climate journalists’ mental health across the world?

A. It's a very broad database. We have journalists from 89 countries, making it a global survey of what climate journalists are experiencing. We divided the data into continents: Europe, Asia, Africa, and combined North and South America to keep the sample size relatively equal across the four groups, which helps with the statistical analysis. 

The first thing that stands out is that places in Asia and Africa are not contributing significantly to climate change the way the industrialised countries are in Europe and North America, in particular, and yet they are paying a much higher price for the effects of climate change in terms of their societies. The journalists are certainly having a harder time covering it. 

This is not to minimise what journalists in Europe, North America and South America are going through. But certainly the journalists in Asia and Africa are more at risk personally, in terms of having to evacuate their homes. They have lost friends, occasionally even a family member, through climate-related events. So it's very real, very immediate and even more dangerous for them. 

And then, despite having this greater burden of covering the story, they have fewer resources when they become psychologically unwell. They're living in societies that do not devote a lot of money and resources to mental health. 

Q. Your other main finding is that close to half of all climate journalists suffer symptoms of anxiety and depression. Is this an inevitable consequence of covering potentially traumatic events, or is there something newsrooms can do to protect these reporters?

A. Newsrooms across the board need to do a better job, not just in Africa and Asia. Journalists do not rate their level of psychological preparedness and awareness for the newsrooms very highly. Their scores are low. But it's even worse in Asia and Africa. 

One has to try to change this through education. You've got to be able to educate newsrooms and news organisations that this is actually a very important point. And when we go back and look at data that we collected during the pandemic, for example, we've got really strong data to show that newsrooms that put counselling in place for journalists during the pandemic had journalists who are less anxious, less depressed and less traumatised. So we know that this works. 

We know that a very simple intervention can make a real difference to how journalists are feeling. With climate change, it's almost like this issue is passing under the radar. It's not regarded as a significant issue, and the data suggests the opposite. I think this is a very significant problem for journalists.

Q. If journalists, as you say, don't think that their newsrooms are doing a good job supporting them, what can they do in the meantime to try and protect themselves?

A. They should look at what we've written. They should give a copy of this piece of research to their newsroom managers to try to change their culture. If they are taking ownership of this, they've got a better chance of bringing about change, as opposed to someone parachuting in and saying, “This is what you should be doing.” 

And then, journalists should reach out for help. They should reach out to colleagues. They can certainly reach out to people like me or [the OCJN]. Running workshops to help journalists is one possibility to get them all acquainted with this. But ultimately, when it comes down to providing therapy, it's a very difficult situation because you don't have the therapist on the ground who's going to provide therapy to journalists who live in different countries; there are many barriers to doing that. From a Canadian perspective, it's very hard to provide therapy outside the country because one's medical profession doesn't encourage it. The restrictions on what you can do, the financial implications, etc. So ultimately, I think for things to change, they have to change from the grassroots up. 

Q. Despite all these very negative findings, there are also some more positive takeaways.

A. Very much. I'm not a prophet of doom. We focus on the trauma, but here a majority of journalists do not have PTSD. A majority do not become depressed. A majority did not develop anxiety disorders. It’s very important to emphasise that this is not an entirely traumatised profession. It'd be very wrong to think of it that way. The minority who develop these problems is more substantial than you'd see in the general population. That's important. But this is not a traumatised profession by any means.

We showed that moral injury is an issue for these journalists. And moral injury is a condition that can arise from witnessing, perpetrating or failing to prevent acts that transgress your moral compass. Moral injury comes with guilt and shame and anger and disgust and despair, so very unpleasant negative emotions. But some journalists use their moral hurt to actually bring about a positive change, to double down on the kind of work that they're doing. To say, “This is so important, I'm going to use my distress to, in a sense, reinvigorate my involvement with climate journalism.” 

They don't walk away from it. They want to do more of it. And some journalists feel that their voice is being heard, that they feel they are making a difference, and that becomes validating as well. 

Q. In the past, you’ve looked at the impact of conflict reporting on mental health. What similarities and differences are there between the impacts of conflict and climate?

A. There are some similarities because the story is traumatic, but conflict journalism is much more dangerous. Climate change can be dangerous, of course, because villages get washed away, they are burned down, etc. But war journalism is a different order of threat. 

That's a very important difference. In war situations, some bad actors try to kill journalists, want to kidnap journalists, and so the level of danger is appreciably higher. And that's why you will see, although we've never done a direct comparison between the two groups, if you just look at the individual data, rates of PTSD, for example, are much higher in journalists who go to war than those who cover climate change. Likewise, for depression and substance abuse, you will see more psychopathology in journalists who spend their working lives covering war.

Q. Is there an overall culture problem in journalism when it comes to mental health?

A. I'm old enough now to have seen significant change over time. When I started to do this work, back in 1999, there wasn't a culture of this at all. It just wasn't there. It was really quite striking. In a pre-9/11 world, things were very different, but there had certainly been a lot of conflict. The collapse of Yugoslavia, the terrible civil wars. There had been the Rwandan genocide, etc. So journalists had tremendous trauma, and there was nothing available to them, literally nothing. 

There was this perception that because you're a journalist, you're okay, you're neutral. And was absolutely wrong. It was just a false belief system. And so when journalists developed mental health difficulties, there was nowhere for them to turn, and, in fact, there was a culture of silence, because people felt, if they admitted to what they were feeling, they were somehow weak, and it would sabotage their career, and they wouldn't do this kind of fascinating foreign correspondence work. 

So things have changed profoundly over the last 25 years, but those changes are much more marked in Canada and the United Kingdom. The Global South is still lagging far behind. But that's in keeping with those countries not devoting a significant part of the budget to mental health in general. There's not a huge awareness of mental health difficulties in those countries, even though they are troubled by mental health difficulties just as much as we are in the developed world. So things lag. 

This data shows you that these journalists in Africa and Asia who have a lot of problems with climate change don't have the resources, and don't have access to counselling. They're not getting the kind of help that somebody in Canada can get.

If you are one of the OCJN members who participated in this study and you need some help with the issues discussed in the paper, you can reach out to Dr Anthony Feinstein or Mitali Mukherjee.