Media Storm - Managing mental health and the media

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi everyone, just a note, this episode contains references to mental illness, suicide and self-harm. If you feel you need someone to talk to, whatever you're going through, you can call the Samaritans for free from any phone on 116-123. Hello, listeners of the guilty feminist, it's Matilda Malinson and Helen Awadier, co-hosts of Media Storm, and we're bringing you a bonus episode with two very exciting guests. Last week on Media Storm, we spoke about portrayals of mental health on TV and film, the do's and don'ts when reporting on mental illness in the news, and why it can feel so good to speak out. That episode is out now, so do go and listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. We had such a good conversation with our special guests on the episode, and so we thought we'd bring you just a little bit more. In this bonus episode,

Starting point is 00:00:57 we're talking about how to look after your mental health when you work in the news or even just read the news and the pros and pitfalls of posting on social media. So here's journalist and podcast producer Camila McKinness. Talk guys, talk. That's my advice and something that's helped me. And author and activist Scarlett Curtis. Still to this day, like writing about my mental health has been one of the best things I've ever done. And this is mental health and the media. So I think it's good to talk about how working in the news or the wider media or Scarlet being so proactive in this area.

Starting point is 00:01:43 How does that impact our mental health? What experiences have you both had with the jobs you do and how do you look after yourselves in that context? I feel like I'm reading bad news every day, but me as a journalist and reporters, on it, sometimes it really does take a toll on my mental health. You know, we've got a cost of living crisis. We've got an energy crisis. Money's not going as far. It's just just negativity, negativity, negativity. My thing that I like to do is taking a time out. I'm always saying that to people, take a time out, whether that is that I have to have like a mental health day to myself, sometimes sometimes I'm just not able to function and I'm unwell.

Starting point is 00:02:27 or just sometimes I take like a week of holiday when I haven't used to all up and spend a week literally doing nothing, recuperating and just like just having some me time. I think something else that can be really difficult working in the media is the insecurity, the instability of it or, you know, working contract contract, freelance contracts, things like that.

Starting point is 00:02:48 That's something that actually pushed me into a really bad depression actually and contributed to me having suicidal thoughts and acting on it. And it's something that I've really had to work on, just building up my resilience. That's something that I think comes with covering negative stories, with having to fight for stories to be commissioned and things like that

Starting point is 00:03:15 and just having this kind of like self-belief. And I've built that up through speaking to my lovely dear mum, through having counselling. But most importantly, by just speaking. for me personally, and that's something that we don't do enough of bottling things up to ourselves. It's unnatural. Talk guys, talk. That's my advice and something that's helped me move forward. That's such amazing advice, I think. You know, even just hearing a journalist say it's okay to switch off sometimes. It's like, I think so needed for so many people who are feeling

Starting point is 00:03:53 that way. I think for me, like, still to this day, like, writing about my mental health has been one of the best things I've ever done. I think I spent so many years living with so much shame. And as soon as I started sharing, I was 19 and I had a blog and I started writing about it. And people from my life started coming up to me and saying they've been doing the same thing, people online. Like, it's just, there is no better feeling than feeling like you're not alone and feeling like other people have been through what you've been through. But the kind of flip side of that coin is that sharing constantly can be in itself very draining and quite triggering, you know, because, you know, I'm so lucky that I have people

Starting point is 00:04:38 sharing their stories with me, but it can be hard. And so I definitely, in the last few years, have let myself off the hook when I don't feel like sharing. You know, yesterday was World Mental Health Day, which is an amazing day. And lots of people are sharing amazing. things, but I share a lot about my mental illness and I just didn't feel like doing it yesterday and I didn't feel I had to, you know, and I think it's like you never have to share. You can, you can sometimes go a bit quiet and take some time. Yeah. My thing is that I like to say to myself is, do you need to do this or do you want to do this? Yes. I didn't post anything on mental health awareness day yesterday. I just wasn't feeling very, very great. And I was thinking, oh God, I need to do

Starting point is 00:05:23 this. And I thought, actually, no, you don't need to. I work on my thinking all the time. And I think, actually, no, I want to do this. So I'm going to do this. I don't need to do this. And yesterday was one of those days where I didn't need to do it. And now I feel much better because I took a time out. I only write about it when I'm feeling good. That's also one of my things. I never share something online while I'm going through it. I always share it after the fact because, A, like I can barely look on my phone when I'm in a bad place except if I'm like playing Candy Crush. And yeah, I definitely can't like share it. So it's always once you're feeling good. I think definitely when reporting, I still take on. Like with media storm, we report on these marginalized and ostracized and

Starting point is 00:06:12 minority groups. And it's it's quite, I find it quite difficult to not sit down at the end of a day of work and be like, oh my God, the cost of living crisis, the war in Ukraine, like trans people getting a horrible rep in the media, like this is all awful. What am I going to do about it? And I feel so overwhelmed all of the time as a journalist, feeling like it's our responsibility to be like changing the world. I can totally relate to that. What I now have started trying to do is like solution-based journalism. Like I remember I did a piece a few years ago and it was about this amazing group

Starting point is 00:06:55 and they were like a mental health group and they go around to bridges in Birmingham and put like uplifting notes and kind of like just like words of encouragement to deter people from attempting to take their own life. This is a whole group of people that are doing this that have got a lived experience with this illness and they're doing it to try and deter people.

Starting point is 00:07:17 We're getting the truth out. here and also we're trying to actually help people and so that's something that I've been trying to do which is which has actually helped me in terms of like my reporting yeah this is how I cope it's with how I define solutions because when you start chasing grand sweeping solutions to these massive issues we're seeing I specialize in immigration and it's a dark day for immigration then you are going to feel beaten down being down beaten down and it's about kind of identifying, for me at least, it's about identifying. What can I do? And then doing what's in my power to do that. Can I get one story published on this? Can I get one person with lived

Starting point is 00:08:01 experience of displacement on a mainstream broadcast talking about this? If I can do that, if I can do that, then I'm going to find peace with like the little solutions and count on the butterfly effect because yeah it can really be overwhelming yeah trying to find the solution trying to like and that's not really my job to assess an extent i'm trying to like get the truth out there but that's really good advice and i'm going to take that i'm going to take that yeah it's trying to to save the world The first time that you two decided to share openly about your mental health, were you scared and how did you get through that?

Starting point is 00:08:57 I was completely terrified and I think I'd reached a point where it felt like the only option because I had become so isolated and so cut off from everyone and that was because I couldn't share with them what I was going through. you know, I didn't even really tell my brothers, like, it was just, I could not. So then I realized, like, if you're ever going to have a human being in your life again, like, you're going to have to share this. And I'm still scared, like, you know, there'll be points where I'll talk about something I didn't talk about for in my book. I talked about trying to take my own life and that felt like another, like, very scary thing.

Starting point is 00:09:37 But what I would say is, like, every time I am shocked by the positivity of the response, and the fact that actually even, you always think you're going to get a bit of positive, but you'll probably get a bit negative. Like, so many people go through this and so many people have so much compassion for it. And on the rare occasion that someone has said something crappy or done something bad, I'm just like, well, that's not a person I want in my life. And if anything, this sped up the process of me realizing that. Yeah, when I go through an episode of depression, I shut off my DMs,

Starting point is 00:10:12 I stopped talking to people, and then I suddenly come back a month later and I have to do my whole sorry tour. Hello, I'm back again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think my friends are used to it. They've got tickets to all of my shows. I felt that I was ready to talk more openly about my mental health. It was when I did that video for the BBC called Kindness Can Save Lives a few years ago. And I felt that I was ready. I was in a place to speak about it openly because I had been on, at first started taking antidepressants when I was 17. I had to drop out of college because I was so depressed

Starting point is 00:10:47 and I lost my passion for music and everything that I did. And so essentially I'd been living in with it for years and it had kind of got to a point in my life where I was quite comfortable with it. Not that it was like my identity, but that I've just felt ready. I just felt ready. I'd been in and out of like counselling and things like that.

Starting point is 00:11:09 And boy, sharing that story, opened so many doors and the feedback that I got. I remember I received hundreds of messages from people saying that they were so touched by it and that they could relate to it as well. And then that's also how I became the host of like Kind Fest because they saw the video and got in contact with me. And now I have all of these lovely, amazing people that I've met through sharing my personal story. They've had such a positive impact on my life. And I think that's partly because because I was brave and spoke about something and have tried to normalise it. And that's exactly what you guys are doing as well through doing this, this episode.

Starting point is 00:11:52 I also think sometimes I'm like so delighted and shocked by like the specificity of the things that I'll relate to with other people. You know, I've started sharing more like very specific things about my mental illness and my, you know, solutions for doing it. And I'm always like, I can, I'm definitely the only person. in the world that does this and then you'll get hundreds of messages being like I do this too and you know my new thing is um often when I am in a very depressed place I get really scared of flushing the toilet it's like the noise is just too much and I talked about that the other day and it's like the grossest smallest thing and I got all these people being like oh my god I have that too and I was like wow that's made me feel so much better about my weird thing you've got someone

Starting point is 00:12:38 else here I'm scared of flushing the toilet too yes I thought it was just me I've discovered that My thing is, it's when I'm on planes. No, the plane ones are horrible. There's something about it. Do they need to be so loud? They're like a monster, like roaring. Yeah, I hate them. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:12:55 Well, on that note. Thank you for listening. Have you heard the latest episode of The Guilty Feminist, live from Canberra with Nikki Britain and Belinda. Kendall. And the next episode of Media Storm focuses on anti-Eastern European racism in the UK, and that will be out on the 27th of October. Follow us at MediaStormPod for more.

Media Storm - Managing mental health and the media

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