psychiatry – Frontline Club

The Emotional Toll on Journalists Covering the Refugee Crisis

Laura Gane — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 13:42:55 +0000

The recent refugee crisis in Europe took an unexpected toll on journalists covering it, exposing individuals and institutions to events and experiences that many found difficult to prepare for and process. That’s according to a new report carried out by the International News Safety Institute and published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, the first study into the link between the media and moral injury. Join report author Hannah Storm in conversation with co-author Professor Anthony Feinstein and award-winning journalists Yannis Behrakis and Will Vassilopoulos to discuss what individuals and institutions can do to better prepare themselves for and navigate this new terrain in mental health for the media.

See the report online here.

Chair – Hannah Storm

Hannah Storm is Director of the International News Safety Institute (INSI), a UK registered charity whose members include some of the world’s leading news organisations. INSI’s work focuses on physical, psychological, and digital safety and it provides a network for members to share information to ensure journalists stay out of harm’s way. Storm is author of The Kidnapping of Journalists: Reporting from High Risk Conflict Zones (with Robert G. Picard) and No Woman’s Land: On the Frontlines with Female Reporters. Before joining INSI, she worked for organisations including the BBC, Reuters, ITN, and Oxfam.

Speakers

Dr Anthony Feinstein

Dr Feinstein is professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and director of the Neuropsychiatry Programme at Sunnybrook Health Science Centre. He has undertaken numerous studies looking at how journalists are affected psychologically by their work in zones of war, conflict, and disaster. He is the author of Journalists Under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War (Johns Hopkins University Press) and Shooting War.

Will Vassilopoulos

Will Vassilopoulos is a freelance Video Journalist primarily working for Agence France-Presse (AFP). He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology & sports sciences and a master’s degree in exercise physiology from Manchester Metropolitan University. He started his journalism career in text for Japanese news agency Kyodo News before becoming a news anchor for the English-language bulletin at Greece’s state broadcaster ERT. In 2011 he went behind the camera and has since covered topics such as Greece’s economic crisis, political unrest in Egypt, Turkey and Romania, the conflict in Ukraine and most recently the migration crisis in Europe. He is the recipient of the 2016 Rory Peck Award for News for his film “Fear and Desperation: Refugees and Migrants Pour into Greece”.

Photo Credits: Yannis Behrakis

War, Disaster and Humanitarian Psychiatry

Laura Gane — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 15:48:33 +0000

What happens if the psychiatric hospital in which you have lived for ten years is bombed and all the staff run away? What is it like to be a twelve-year-old and see all your family killed in front of you? Is it true that almost everyone caught up in a disaster is likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder?

Dr Lynne Jones has been a psychiatrist working in conflict zones for over 20 years. From treating soldiers in the Bosnian war, to attending to families affected by the Haitian earthquake, or those who lost relatives in the Sri Lankan tsunami, Dr Jones is coming to the Frontline Club to discuss and share her experiences of working in some of the world’s biggest disaster zones. She will be discussing issues such as if there is a right approach to deal with mental health in humanitarian disasters, and is there a different way we approach mental health in crises in third world countries compared to developed ones? Dr Jones’ field diaries have been published in the London Review of Books and her audio diaries broadcast on the BBC World Service.

Joining this discussion is Dr Conor Kenny from Doctors Without Borders. Dr Kenny has been providing healthcare for some of the most vulnerable people in Europe. His first assignment began in Idomeni, a transit camp for refugees on the Greek border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. After residents of the Idomeni camp were evicted, Conor moved to Lesbos to work providing healthcare in specialised camps designated for the most vulnerable refugees on the island. The refugees here face a number of medical and psychosocial problems as a result of their extensive journeys that Dr Kenny has been treating.

Moderator – Rob Williams CEO War Child

Rob Williams is Chief Executive of War Child, the UK charity dedicated to supporting children affected by conflict. War Child delivers psychosocial support, child protection, education and livelihoods programmes in a range of countries affected by war including Central African Republic, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, and The Democratic Republic of Congo, helping children who have been abused, abducted, displaced or separated from their families. Previously in relief and development Rob has worked for Save the Children, the British Red Cross and Concern Worldwide in Africa and Asia leading country programmes and also managing emergency response. In the UK he has been, at various times, Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England, Chief Executive of Bliss – the premature baby charity, and Chief Executive of the Fatherhood Institute He is married with two children and lives in Cambridge.

Click on the link to see Dr Lynne Jones’ new book, Outside the Asylum: A Memoir of War, Disaster and Humanitarian Psychiatry