Breaking Bad News
This booklet is intended to offer informal guidance in circumstances where journalists, their editors or managers are required to tell next-of-kin of the death of a colleague.
This booklet is intended to offer informal guidance in circumstances where journalists, their editors or managers are required to tell next-of-kin of the death of a colleague.
Whether clinicians like it or not, children and families affected by trauma are routinely covered by the media. When that happens, clinicians often face difficult choices.
Note: Available as PDF download only.
When children are victims of violence, journalists have a responsibility to report the truth with compassion and sensitivity.
Journalists continue to struggle with effective, sensitive, and consistent reporting on suicide. In this three-part series, Meg Spratt, with Dart Fellow Liisa Hyvarinen, Dart Executive Committee Chair Emeritus Frank Ochberg, and others, explore the issues and complexities of responsible coverage.
Journalists continue to struggle with effective, sensitive, and consistent reporting on suicide. In this three-part series, Meg Spratt, with Dart Fellow Liisa Hyvarinen, Dart Executive Committee Chair Emeritus Frank Ochberg, and others, explore the issues and complexities of responsible coverage.
After two packed days at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies conference, I was exhausted, even though I didn't make it the conference's liveliest evening session (see picture). But between meetings with Dart Center and Dart Society leaders on the third and final day, I still managed to sit in on several significant panels, all speaking directly to the interface between journalists and the traumatic human experiences they cover ...
After my last post, at the end of my first day at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies' annual conference, the ISTSS gave out their annual awards. Of particular note: the 2008 Frank Ochberg Award for Media and Trauma Study was given to the Dart Center's founding director, Roger Simpson, for his groundbreaking research work ...
Once a year, you can find the world's trauma experts, the Dart Center's staff and the journalists who won Dart's annual Ochberg Fellowships in one place: the annual meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. This year the place is Chicago, and while the fellows are bonding in their fourth day of seminars, I'm wandering in and out of panels learning about the cutting edge of trauma research from psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, counselors, administrators, advocates, journalists, and even clergy. Today through Sunday, I'll be blogging their nuggets of wisdom here.
Journalists in Switzerland and Germany are talking about the case of Carl Just: a war reporter suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who just sued his former employer. Just's lawsuit appears to be the first suit for work-related PTSD to be brought by a journalist against a European media company.
According to a study in the September 2008 American Journal of Preventive Medicine, there are only a few proven, effective practices for treating children with post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet more than 75% of mental health professionals may be practicing something else.