WE ARE WARRIORS (CHAPTER. 2)
Written by Andi Bazaar, Co-wrote by Clayton-Euridicé Schofield | Nov 5, 2022
The stigma of having depression, anxiety, PTSD or any Mental Illness is huge. This is deeply wrong and prevents people from getting help. #WorldMentalHealthDay is meant to highlight this inequity, help people feel supported, destigmatize and validate that we need change now.
I want to say some hard things to whoever needs to read it. I left a dope job at VICE that had some dope ass people, and it still hurts like hell. I didn’t want to leave, and crying in a damn stall confirmed that but mental health doesn’t care about your wants.
A friend of mines committed suicide last month and at the time, I was already dealing with exhaustion. The exhaustion of having my experiences blend with the daily, monthly and yearly reminders of a society or readership that didn’t value BLM.
As BIPOC journalists, some of us constantly deal with maintaining our value. The world already does a good enough job of systematically undercutting that (much of which we expose ourselves to) and as a journalist, it’s easy to drown in all that shit until you’re just floating.
I was floating and I went on leave and nearly went broke via therapy to take care of it, when I came back my therapist and I agreed that my sense of value needed to be repaired. Finding out how much less I was being paid was a major talking point and it became a principle.
Blame it on “pivot to video” finances, etc but I didn’t get the answers I wanted. No negotiation, just a flat out “maybe next year”, “work harder” with a promise that I’d have to write more to boot. For a company I still view as progressive and valuable, it still sucks.
I’m not okay even if I’ve been pretending, media companies need to do more than diversity hires etc.
- what do you have in place to ensure that current and new BIPOC journalists are mentally okay and feel valued?
- who can they talk to that can identify with their unique issues?
These problems that BIPOC journalists face are systematic, it shouldn’t be addressed with pamphlets and an expense that comes out of the pockets of their pockets. Do the systematic work so that new hires without “thick skin” can swim instead of just float I’m done.
So, no joke I was too depressed to write about my mental health I meant to put up a series I did on "Chapter. 2" — I meant to put up some interviews I did with Mental Health experts on the "Collective Trauma" we are experiencing but I just couldn't.
For months I've been being treated for an exacerbation of PTSD with concomitant depression and anxiety, I was going to write something profound about that but instead took a Xanax, cried for a bit, read some poetry (which I used to write), tried not to crawl out of my skin.
I mostly wanted to say that we all need to be able to talk about how mental illness is often crushing, the pain as exhausting as physical pain. I wanted to say to folks who are suffering that you are not alone because there are millions of us but I was unable to do any of it.
This is a dark time for many, folks who have never suffered from depression or anxiety are experiencing it for the first time. There is a lot of incapacitating fear out there, folks fear for their elderly parents, their kids, themselves. We miss the semblance of normalcy.
I just want to say that the best thing you can do for yourself is remain connected, engage with other people however you can. Crawl out of yourself as much as possible to try and maintain some balance, it's so hard but it's a layer of self-care and don't isolate too much.
Remember to breathe, we literally start taking only shallow breaths when stressed and make yourself breathe deeply, in through your nose, out through your mouth. Stay hydrated, being dehydrated makes you agitated and unwell. Remember to be grateful, it takes you out of yourself.
don't harm yourself
don't blame yourself
hang on, it will get better
it has to
The stigma of having depression, anxiety, PTSD or any Mental Illness is huge. This is deeply wrong and prevents people from getting help. #WorldMentalHealthDay is meant to highlight this inequity, help people feel supported, destigmatize and validate that we need change now.
Journalism is a double edged sword, IMO there are three aspects to trauma and mental health that need to be addressed in classes:
- Self-care of journalists.
- How to cope when the news and your personal life collide.
- How to avoid traumatizing others.
I'm not proposing solutions here just want to add to this discussion, I've talked before about the people I've lost in my life and recently I've started speaking more about the long road of recovering from or living with PTSD. I also studied journalism at University.
In school your life revolves around breaking news, you study it, dissect it, do quizzes on it but what you don't usually talk about is what happens when a personal tragedy becomes the news.
how do you cope?
how do you deal with the coverage, your colleagues, the trauma?
If you're the one covering a colleague, friend or family's loss how do you not inflict more trauma in the course of "getting the story?" — this is a very personal issue for me, one I've struggled with. In my first semester of school my brother-in-law died in a plane crash.
The plane crash was national news, for days on end video footage of the crash played across all the networks. Family photos of my brother-in-law were everywhere. Reporters were calling my in-laws wanting to talk, my family ended up giving a press conference to stop those calls.
I watched that press conference on TV, watched my grieving family in shock trying to make it through their statement without breaking down. The experience changed my view forever on journalism and what it means to be a journalist, I didn't know how I was going to keep going.
And I have to say the journalism department at Concordia were incredible and my profs were amazing, couldn't have made it through that first year without it. Don't think I ever told you guys what that meant to me.
I feel this is why we desperately need to create courses that discuss trauma in news from all sides of the issue, one of the most difficult things about the journalism profession is trying to inform the public without adding to the collective trauma of everyone involved.
When profits and corporate culture are thrown into the mix it becomes even harder to walk that fine line of exploitative versus informative news, most news stories focus on trauma of some kind and this has a profound effect on the mental health of journalists and their subjects and when the subjects of your news story also happen to be friends or family the negative effects are magnified. Local news reporters in small communities face this all the time, they are intimately linked to what is happening around them. It takes a toll, so this has to change.
We need to prepare journalism students for this reality, they need to also understand what it means to be the subject of a tragic news story. How difficult it is to navigate that kind of media attention when you're in shock and grieving, also need to talk about coping mechanisms.
How to deal with the trauma you're covering in a constructive not destructive way, also need to provide more resources for journalism students and journalists so they can take care of their mental health needs safely. All of this is so important to talk about!
A SPECIAL THANKS TO:
- Dr Oliver Schofield, MD (Consulting)
- Dr Seth Gryffen, MD (Consulting)
- Clayton Euridicé Schofield (Co-wrote/Editor/Journalist)
- Timothée Freimann schofield (Photographed)
- Henrie Louis Friedrich (Analyst)
- Shot at GQ’s Studios by José Schenkkan and Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph
