Resources for Journalists Coping With Trauma

June 21, 2021 by Elana Newman, Naseem S. Miller

Dr. Elana Newman, The Dart Center's Research Director, and Naseem S. Miller, Senior Health Editor for The Journalist’s Resource, assembled a list of resources for coping with trauma as part of the Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference in June 2021.

Thomas Samson / AFP via Getty Images

Journalists record an arrest by French riot police forces during a rally as part of Black Lives Matter protests against racism and police brutality in Paris on June 13, 2020.

Self-care

Self-Care Tips for News Media (The Dart Center): “These tips are offered as suggestions only, to assist in fostering healthier newsrooms and better journalism. They are based on research findings on well-being and resilience and the practical experience of news professionals in the field.”
Safety and Self-Care Strategies for Every Beat (The Dart Center): Video, where a “panel introduced safety, security and self-care strategies that should be in every reporter's toolkit, for assignments ranging from neighborhood beats to disasters, mass shootings, and investigative projects.”
Mindfulness Training for Journalists (The Dart Center): On September 10, 2015, “the Dart Center hosted a special half-day workshop on mindfulness practice, led by teachers from the monastic community founded by poet, author and activist Thich Nhat Hanh.”
Chair Yoga for Journalists (The Dart Center): “This 11 min. chair yoga by former foreign correspondent Kimina Lyall, Deputy Director, Dart Centre Asia Pacific is for media practitioners working at their desks or working from home. You do not need to be a yoga practitioner.”
How journalists can take care of themselves while covering trauma (The Poynter Institute): “Journalists can't properly cover trauma if they're suffering themselves — here's a guide to self-care.”
Under Pressure: Coping with stress, and knowing you’re not alone: A tip sheet compiled by Ken Armstrong, senior reporter at ProPublica.
6 tips for protecting your mental health when reporting on trauma (International Journalists’ Network): “The following techniques may help journalists build [their] own resiliency and learn how to report sensibly on trauma-related issues.”

Getting help

Choosing a Psychotherapist (The Dart Center): A guide for journalists seeking therapy for personal or work-related issues.
The Journalist Trauma Support Network: A pilot program training therapists to help journalists.
U.S. Journalism Emergency Fund and Black Journalists Therapy Relief Fund (International Women’s Media Foundation): “The International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) is partnering with the Black Journalists Therapy Relief Fund for this joint effort to provide emergency funding to Black journalists.”
AAPI Journalists' Financial Assistance for Mental Wellness: “This fund, created in partnership with AAJA, is designed to provide financial assistance specifically for AAPI journalists to help you get the support you need during this time. There are no therapists designated for this fund, so the money can be used at your discretion, whether it’s to continue seeing your current therapist, to see a therapist for the first time, or to pay for your medication.”

Apps and online tools for self-care

Insight Timer: A free library of thousands of guided meditations
PTSD Coach: Developed by the VA, the app provides education about PTSD, information about professional care, self assessment and tools to manage stresses of daily life with PTSD.
Mindfulness Coach: Developed by the VA, the app has been shown to be effective in reducing stress, increasing self awareness and helping with anxiety and depression.
Insomnia Coach: Developed by the VA, the app is based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia.
COVID Coach: Developed by the VA, the app supports self-care and overall mental health during the pandemic.
Provider Resilience: The app is designed to help users to stay emotionally healthy while remaining productive. Although it’s designed for health-care providers, it can be useful for journalists.

Resources for managers

Tips for Managers and Editors (The Dart Center): “These tips are for managers and editors to help them prepare and support the reporters who do this difficult and important work.”
Leading Resilience: A Guide for Editors and News Managers on Working with Freelancers Exposed to Trauma (The Dart Center): “A collaboration between ACOS Alliance and Dart Centre Asia Pacific, this guide is designed to help editors and managers understand and support their teams. It is divided into five sections covering both general information and specific suggestions and tips for working with freelancers.”
Managing Stress & Trauma on Investigative Projects (The Dart Center): “A tip sheet from [Dart's] Executive Director Bruce Shapiro, originally released at the 2005 Investigative Reporters & Editors Annual Conference.”
How to add well-being to a newsroom natural disaster plan (Radio Television Digital News Association): “Here are five strategies that are musts for any news team.”
Newsroom depression: Warning signs and strategies (Radio Television Digital News Association): “News directors, you have a stressful enough job to deliver ratings, hire the right people and do the best you can to manage up every day. Pay attention. Here is a checklist of some of journalists’ vulnerabilities to emotional illnesses.”
Are you ready for trauma in your newsroom? New research may help (Radio Television Digital News Association): “Managers who may have never experienced large-scale shocking events may lack needed experience to successfully navigate staff through unexpected emotional landmines. In Oklahoma City the [news] leaders learned [these lessons.]”

Harassment

Online Abuse: A Self-Defence Guide (The Dart Center): “Online abuse and harassment come in many forms, from borderline incivility all the way up to systematic attacks that are engineered to inflict real psychological harm. This guide offers some thoughts on managing their potential impact.”
Maintaining Boundaries with Sources, Colleagues & Supervisors (The Dart Center): “This tip sheet, drawing on interviews with nine leading women in journalism and other sources, offers strategies for recognizing, mitigating and addressing sexual harassment and other predatory behavior while reporting.”

How our work affects us

Covering Trauma: Impact on Journalists (The Dart Center): “An overview of current research on the occupational hazards for journalists covering traumatic events, the risk factors that aggravate those effects, and some suggestions for mitigating those factors.”
How journalists’ jobs affect their mental health: a research roundup (The Journalist’s Resource): “Journalists report on complex and difficult topics, including natural disasters, political violence and human suffering. We’ve summarized studies that look at how occupational stress affects journalists' mental health.”
Journalists are under stress. What’s the solution? (The Journalist’s Resource): “A large body of research shows how journalists' jobs can pose a risk to their mental health. We searched these studies for tips on preventing and addressing the stress and trauma of reporting the news.”
News managers are traumatized, too (Radio Television Digital News Association): “Terror attacks, natural disasters, and other deadly events send shockwaves of trauma throughout newsrooms and entire organizations. Managers can feel guilt, regret, and secondary stress reactions when the journalists they manage suffer from traumatic events.”

Additional resources

Trauma & Journalism handbook (The Dart Center): The handbook distills the expertise of international trauma experts.
Mental health and journalism (International Journalists’ Network): A six-part podcast series featuring interviews with reporters and mental health experts.
Journalism and Trauma (self-directed course on Poynter): “This course will teach you how traumatic stress affects victims and how to interview trauma victims with compassion and respect… [and] how to take care of your own health after covering a traumatic event.”
Covering Mass Tragedies: Tips, story ideas, resources and words of encouragement by members of the Journalists Covering Trauma Facebook group.
Covering Sensitive Issues and Coping with Trauma: Moderated by Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium Coordinator Hana Carey, the panel focuses on reporting on sensitive issues and recuperating from traumatic experiences in the field.
Mental Health for Journalists (Journalist’s Toolbox): “This page features resources for journalists with mental health needs and also links for covering mental health.”
When the News Breaks the Journalists (J-Source): “Journalists are coming out and talking honestly about mental illness.”

Elana Newman

Research Director - University of Tulsa

Elana Newman, Ph.D. is the McFarlin Professor of Psychology and Affiliate Faculty in Media Studies at the University of Tulsa; and Research Director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. Newman specializes in understanding and treating trauma-related conditions and training students and professionals from many professions about the skills they need to work effectively with people suffering from trauma-related problems. Her research in the field of traumatic stress has examined a wide range of topics including the physical and psychological effects of trauma exposure upon adults and children, health care costs and trauma, journalism and trauma, occupational health and trauma, research ethics in studying trauma survivors, correctional issues and trauma, and substance abuse and trauma. Newman’s work in journalism and trauma focuses on the occupational health of journalists, including safety, harassment, educational needs, coping with trauma exposure, ethics, and the impact of trauma news on consumers.

She directs the creation of an online searchable database of articles related to journalism and trauma available at the Dart Center website. She also trains journalists on interviewing survivors, trauma-informed news management, covering traumatic events in local contexts including sexual violence on campus, self-care and occupational health, and general trauma information. Newman consults with journalists and documentary film makers about various ethical and professional trauma-related issues related to storytelling. Newman is a founding staff member of the Journalist Trauma Support Network to train qualified therapists to care for trauma-impacted journalists team members. She co-directed the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma’s’ first satellite office in NYC after 9-11. Newman is a past president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Newman was one of the co-founders of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

Naseem S. Miller

Naseem S. Miller is the Senior Health Editor at The Journalist's Resource. She covered the Pulse Nightclub mass shooting for the Orlando Sentinel and helped start the Journalists Covering Trauma Facebook group to provide professional and emotional support to reporters who cover tragic events.

Request Publications

Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character

Jonathan Shay is a Boston based psychiatrist caring for Vietnam combat veterans diagnosed with severe, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. In this unique and revolutionary book, Dr. Shay examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer’s Iliad with many of his patients, Vietnam veterans struggling with PTSD . Although the Iliad was written twenty-seven centuries ago, so much can be learned about combat trauma, especially when it is threaded through the compelling voices and experiences of Vietnam vets.

Buy Now

Journalists under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War

War journalists, like all who have prolonged exposure to violence, come home emotionally maimed and often broken. And yet, a news culture in denial has pretended that war journalists are immune from trauma. This fit into the macho culture of war journalism. It also assuaged the consciences of those running news organizations, who often crumple up and discard, years later, those they send to war. Dr. Feinstein has provided us with research that is a chilling reminder that war journalists are human, as well as a searing indictment of major news conglomerates who have refused to acknowledge or address the suffering of their own.

Buy Now

PTSD and Veterans: A Conversation with Dr. Frank Ochberg

How do we help veterans who are returning from war with PTSD? Dr. Frank Ochberg, a leading authority on PTSD, shares his experiences, seasoned insights and suggestions in this intimate conversation with reporter Mike Walters. He shares his insights regarding common symptoms to look out for and the importance of building trust and other aspects of the patient-therapist relationship. He then explains techniques he has developed that help his clients work through the trauma and adapt to civilian life.

Watch Now

Mapping Trauma and Its Wake: Autobiographic Essays by Pioneer Trauma Scholars

Mapping Trauma and Its Wake is a compilation of autobiographic essays by seventeen of the field's pioneers, each of whom has been recognized for his or her contributions by the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Each author discusses how he or she first got interested in the field, what each feels are his or her greatest achievements, and where the discipline might - and should - go from here. This impressive collection of essays by internationally-renowned specialists is destined to become a classic of traumatology literature. It is a text that will provide future mental health professionals with a window into the early years of this rapidly expanding field.

Post-Traumatic Therapy And Victims Of Violence (Psychosocial Stress Series)

Frank M. Ochberg, MD is adjunct professor of psychiatry, criminal justice and journalism at Michigan State University. He served in the cabinet of Governor William Milliken as Mental Health Director. His book, Post Traumatic Therapy and Victims of Violence, is widely acclaimed as one of the leading resources in the field.

Buy Now

Witness to an Extreme Century: A Memoir

In this long-awaited memoir, Lifton charts the adventurous and surprising course of his fascinating life journey, one that took him from what he refers to as, "a Jewish Huck Finn childhood in Brooklyn, to deep and meaningful friendships with many of the most influential intellectuals, writers, and artists of our time—from Erik Erikson, David Riesman, and Margaret Mead, to Howard Zinn and Kurt Vonnegut, Stanley Kunitz, Kenzaburo Oe, and Norman Mailer. This work is more than a memoir, it is also a remarkable study of Hiroshima survivors. Lifton explored the human consequences of nuclear weapons, and then went on to uncover dangerous forms of attraction to their power in the spiritual disease he calls nuclearism. Lifton writing illuminates the reversal of healing and killing in ordinary physicians who had been socialized to Nazi evil. Written with the warmth of spirit—along with the humor and sense of absurdity—that have made Lifton a beloved friend and teacher to so many, Witness to an Extreme Century is a moving and deeply thought-provoking story of one man’s extraordinary commitment to looking into the abyss of evil in order to help others move past it.

Buy Now

Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming

In this original psychological literary work, Dr. Jonathan Shay continues what he started in his book, Achilles in Vietnam. Uses the Odyssey, the story of a soldier's homecoming, Shay sheds light on the pitfalls that trap many veterans on the road to recovery, the return to civilian life. The combination of psychological insight and literary brilliance feels seamless. Shay makes an impassioned plea to renovate American military institutions and in doing so deepens the readers understanding of the veteran's experience.

Buy Now

Trauma Journalism: On Deadline in Harm's Way

Trauma Journalism personalizes this movement with in-depth profiles of reporters, researchers and trauma experts engaged in an international effort to transform how the media work under the most difficult of conditions.Through biographical sketches concerning several significant traumatic events (Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine school tragedy, 9/11, Iraq War, the South Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina), students and working reporters will gain insights into the critical components of contemporary journalism practices.

Buy Now

After the War Zone: A Practical Guide for Returning Troops and Their Families

Two experts from the VA National Center for PTSD come together in this work to provide an essential resource for service members, their spouses, families, and communities. They shed light on what troops really experience during deployment and once they return home. Pinpointing the most common after-effects of war and offering strategies for troop reintegration to daily life, Friedman and Slone cover the myths and realities of homecoming; reconnecting with spouse and family; anger and adrenaline; guilt and moral dilemmas; and PTSD and other mental-health concerns. With a wealth of community and government resources, tips, and suggestions, After the War Zone is a practical guide to helping troops and their families prevent war zone stresses from having a lasting negative impact.

Buy Now

Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges

Experiencing trauma at some point in life is almost inevitable, overcoming it is not. This inspiring book identifies ten key ways to weather and bounce back from stress and trauma. Steven M. Southwick incorporates the latest scientific research and interviews with trauma survivors. This book provides a practical guide to building emotional, mental and physical resilience after trauma.

Buy Now

Trauma Therapy in Context: The Science and Craft of Evidence-based Practice

This book examines several current clinical approaches to trauma-focused treatment. Rather than describe theoretical approaches in isolation, the editors have integrated these interventions into a broader clinical context. Chapter authors emphasize basic therapeutic skills such as empathic listening, instilling resilience, and creating meaning, in the service of empirically-supported, highly efficacious trauma interventions. Throughout, they focus on the real-life challenges that arise in typical therapy sessions to deepen our understanding and application of evidence based interventions. While this book is intended for all clinical mental health professionals who work with trauma survivors it is also a phenomenal resource for those who seek to broaden their understanding of the way various approaches to understanding treatment of trauma.

Buy Now

The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

The Boston Globe called this book, "A powerful reminder not only of what happened, but of the monumental evil done by the particular human beings who were trained to heal and cure." Based on arresting historical scholarship and personal interviews with Nazi and prisoner doctors, the book traces the inexorable logic leading from early Nazi sterilization and euthanasia of its own citizens to mass extermination of "racial undesirables."This extraordinary work combines research and analyzation to describe a seemingly contradictory phenomenon of doctors becoming agents of mass murder. With chilling literary power, Lifton describes the Nazi transmutation of values that allowed medical killing to be seen as a therapeutic healing of the body politic.

Buy Now

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence

When Trauma and Recovery was first published in 1992, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work. In the intervening years, Herman’s volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large.

Buy Now

Sharing the Front Line and the Back Hills

Sharing the Front Line and the Back Hills is a story that points to a crisis facing international institutions and the media who seek to alleviate and report human suffering throughout the world. The goals of the editor are to tell the story of thousands of individuals dedicated to helping others; and to integrate issues of protection and care into all levels of planning, implementing and evaluating international intervention and action. The book identifies approaches that have proven useful and explores and suggests future directions.

Buy Now

The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence

Ervin Staub explores the psychological, cultural, and societal roots of group aggression. He sketches a conceptual framework for the many influences on one group's desire to harm another: cultural and social patterns predisposing to violence, historical circumstances resulting in persistent life problems, and needs and modes of adaptation arising from the interaction of these influences.

Buy Now

Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia

Arnold Isaacs, who spent the final years of the war in Vietnam as a correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, describes his firsthand observations of the collapse of Cambodia and South Vietnam―from the 1973 Paris peace agreement to the American evacuation of Saigon and its aftermath―with heartbreaking detail, from the devastated battlefields and villages to the boats filled with terrified refugees.

Buy Now

Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story

With inspiring fearlessness, McClelland tackles perhaps her most harrowing assignment to date: investigating the damage in her own mind and repairing her broken psyche. She begins to probe the depths of her illness, exploring our culture's history with PTSD, delving into the latest research by the country's top scientists and therapists, and spending time with veterans and their families.

Buy Now

Shoah

Shoah is Claude Lanzmann's landmark documentary meditation on the Holocaust. Assembled from footage shot by the filmmaker during the 1970s and 1980s, it investigates the genocide at the level of experience: the geographical layout of the camps and the ghettos; the daily routines of imprisonment; the inexorable trauma of humiliation, punishment, extermination; and the fascinating insights of those who experienced these events first hand.

Buy Now

Nostalgia for the Light

Guzmán focuses on the similarities between astronomers researching humanity’s past, in an astronomical sense, and the struggle of many Chilean women who still search, after decades, for the remnants of their relatives executed during the dictatorship. Patricio Guzmán narrates the documentary himself and the documentary includes interviews and commentary from those affected and from astronomers and archeologists.

Buy Now

The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict

The Observer's chief foreign correspondent Peter Beaumont, takes us into the guts of modern conflict. He visits the bombed and abandoned home of Mullah Omar; discovers a deserted Al Qaeda camp where he finds documents describing a plan to attack London; talks to young bomb-throwers in a Rafah refugee camp. Unflinching and utterly gripping

Buy Now

Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World

MINDFULNESS reveals a set of simple yet powerful practices that you can incorporate into daily life to help break the cycle of anxiety, stress, unhappiness, and exhaustion. It promotes the kind of happiness and peace that gets into your bones. It seeps into everything you do and helps you meet the worst that life throws at you with new courage.

Buy Now

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust.

Buy Now

Legends of People Myths of State: Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka

This provocative study of the political culture of nationalism in Sri Lanka and Australia - is one of the few genuinely comparative studies in anthropology and in taking up such an important question as nationalism it reminds us that truly relevant anthropology questions deep-seated cultural beliefs, including our own

Buy Now

Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Jerusalem 1913 shows us a cosmopolitan city whose religious tolerance crumbled before the onset of Z ionism and its corresponding nationalism on both sides-a conflict that could have been resolved were it not for the onset of World War I. With extraordinary skill, Amy Dockser Marcus rewrites the story of one of the world's most indelible divides.

Buy Now

They Fought for Each Other: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Hardest Hit Unit in Iraq

Based on "Blood Brothers," the award-nominated series that ran in Army Times, this is the remarkable story of a courageous military unit that sacrificed their lives to change Adhamiya, Iraq from a lawless town where insurgents roamed freely, to a safe and secure neighborhood. This is a timeless story of men at war and a heartbreaking account of American sacrifice in Iraq.

Buy Now

Breaking News Breaking Down

Breaking News, Breaking Down, Two journalists' emotional journey after 9/11 & Katrina - This program tells the hidden story of how traumatic news impacts the men and women who cover it. Mike Walter loved chasing the big story, but on one September morning, the biggest story of his career chased him down: a jet rained from the sky, piercing the Pentagon and shattering his emotional well being.

Buy Now

Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War

Tara McKelvey — the first U.S.journalist to speak with female prisoners from Abu Ghraib — traveled to the Middle East and across the United States to seek out victims and perpetrators. McKelvey tells how soldiers, acting in an atmosphere that encouraged abuse and sadism, were unleashed on a prison population of which the vast majority, according to army documents, were innocent civilians.

Buy Now

Gogo Mama : A Journey Into the Lives of Twelve African Women

This book is a journey across Africa, in all its complexity; from the townships of Johannesburg, to the back alleys of Zanzibar; from the frontline of the war in the Sudan, to the nightclubs of Cairo. It is a vivid, illuminating and often haunting composite picture of an extraordinary continent, in the words of the women who know it best.

Buy Now

Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America

This is the first anthology of its kind, bringing together outstanding practitioners of the muckraking tradition, from the Revolutionary era to the present day. Ranging from mainstream figures like Woodward and Bernstein to legendary iconoclasts such as I. F. Stone and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the dispatches in this collection combine the thrill of the chase after facts with a burning sense of outrage

Buy Now

Trauma Therapy in Context: The Science and Craft of Evidence-based Practice

Buy Now

The Search for God at Harvard

What began as a project to deepen his knowledge of the world’s sacred beliefs turned out to be an extraordinary journey of spiritual illumination, one in which Goldman reexamined his own faith as an Orthodox Jew and opened his mind to the great religions of the world. Written with warmth, humor, and penetrating clarity, The Search for God at Harvard is a book for anyone who has wrestled with the question of what it means to take religion seriously today.

Buy Now

Smart Health Choices

This fully revised and updated new edition of Smart Health Choices will provide you with the tools for assessing health advice, whether it comes from a specialist, general practitioner, naturopath, the media, the Internet, or a friend. It shows you how to take an active role in your health care, and to make the best decisions for you and your loved ones based on personal preferences and the best available evidence.

Buy Now

Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11

Filled with astonishing personal stories, conflict, and drama, Feet to the Fire gives readers the rare opportunity to walk a mile in the shoes of this nation’s most powerful journalists and news executives and experience their highly stressful environments. With each new and revealing interview, Borjesson gathers devastating details from national security and intelligence reporters, White House journalists, Middle East experts, war correspondents, and others. Like pieces of a terrible puzzle, these conversations combine to provide a hair-raising view of the mechanisms by which the truth has been manufactured post 9/11.

Buy Now

Chronicling Trauma: Journalists and Writers on Violence and Loss

Grounded in the latest research in the fields of trauma studies, literary biography, and the history of journalism, this study draws upon the lively and sometimes breathtaking accounts of popular writers such as Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Graham Greene, and Truman Capote, exploring the role that trauma has played in shaping their literary works. Underwood notes that the influence of traumatic experience upon journalistic literature is being reshaped by a number of factors, including news media trends, the advance of the Internet, the changing nature of the journalism profession, the proliferation of psychoactive drugs, and journalists' greater self-awareness of the impact of trauma in their work.

Buy Now

Daring to Feel: Violence, the News Media, and Their Emotions

Daring to Feel is a bold, brave book. Jody Santos challenges the entrenched doctrine that journalists are neutral, dispassionate observers of 'fact.' Santos demonstrates how journalists themselves and society as a whole benefit from emotionally nuanced and emotionally engaged reporting. This is a beautifully written tribute to the passion of journalists and the heart-wrenching stories they cover.

Buy Now

The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War

In The Things They Cannot Say, award-winning journalist and author Kevin Sites asks these difficult questions of eleven soldiers and marines, who—by sharing the truth about their wars—display a rare courage that transcends battlefield heroics. For each of these men, many of whom Sites first met while in Afghanistan and Iraq, the truth means something different. One struggles to recover from a head injury he believes has stolen his ability to love; another attempts to make amends for the killing of an innocent man; yet another finds respect for the enemy fighter who tried to kill him. Sites also shares the unsettling narrative of his own failures during war—including his complicity in a murder—and the redemptive powers of storytelling that saved him from a self-destructive downward spiral.

Buy Now

In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars

Kevin Sites, the award-winning journalist, covered virtually every major global hot spot as the first Internet correspondent for Yahoo! News. Beginning his journey with the anarchic chaos of Somalia in September 2005 and ending with the Israeli-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006, Sites talks with rebels and government troops, child soldiers and child brides, and features the people on every side, including those caught in the cross fire. His honest reporting helps destroy the myths of war by putting a human face on war's inhumanity.

Buy Now

Swimming with Warlords: A Dozen-Year Journey Across the Afghan War

Using his trademark immersive style, Kevin Sites uncovered surprising stories with unexpected truths. He swam in the Kunduz River with an infamous warlord named Nabi Gechi, who demonstrated both his fearsome killing skills as well as a genius for peaceful invention. Sites talked with ex-Taliban fighters, politicians, female cops, farmers, drug addicts, and diplomats, and patrolled with American and Afghan soldiers. In Swimming with Warlords he helps us to understand this kingdom of primitive beauty, dark mysteries, and savage violence, as well as the conflict that has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives--and what we might expect tomorrow and in the years to come.

Buy Now

What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars

Most Americans are now familiar with PTSD and its prevalence among troops. In this groundbreaking book, David Wood examines the far more pervasive yet less understood experience of those we send to war: moral injury, the violation of our fundamental values of right and wrong that so often occurs in the impossible moral dilemmas of modern conflict.

Buy Now

Collective Conviction: The Story of Disaster Action

Collective Conviction tells the story of Disaster Action, a small charity founded in 1991 by survivors and bereaved people from the disasters of the late 1980s, including Zeebrugge, King's Cross, Clapham, Lockerbie, Hillsborough and the Marchioness. The aims were to create a health and safety culture in which disasters were less likely to occur and to support others affected by similar events.

Buy Now

You are here

Resources for Journalists Coping With Trauma

Self-care

Getting help

Apps and online tools for self-care

Resources for managers

Harassment

How our work affects us

Additional resources

Request Publications

Tragedies & Journalists

Reporting War

News Media & Trauma

Covering Children & Trauma

Child Clinicians & the Media

Covering Columbine

Ethical Reporting on People Affected by Trauma

Peer Support for Journalists

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character

Journalists under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War

PTSD and Veterans: A Conversation with Dr. Frank Ochberg

Mapping Trauma and Its Wake: Autobiographic Essays by Pioneer Trauma Scholars

Post-Traumatic Therapy And Victims Of Violence (Psychosocial Stress Series)

Witness to an Extreme Century: A Memoir

Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming

Trauma Journalism: On Deadline in Harm's Way

After the War Zone: A Practical Guide for Returning Troops and Their Families

Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges

Trauma Therapy in Context: The Science and Craft of Evidence-based Practice

Home from the War: Learning From Vietnam Veterans

The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence

Covering Violence: A Guide to Ethical Reporting About Victims & Trauma

Sharing the Front Line and the Back Hills

The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence

Parallel Justice for Victims of Crime

Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia

Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles

A Country Called Amreeka: U.S. History Retold through Arab-American Lives

Patriot Acts: Narratives of Post-9/11 Injustice

Unsettled/Desasosiego: Children in a World of Gangs/Los niños en un mundo de las pandillas

Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America's Future

War Photographer

Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur

The Troubles We've Seen

Ghosts by Daylight: Love, War, and Redemption

Echoes of Violence: Letters from a War Reporter (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity)

It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story

Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide

Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values

Shoah

Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology

Carnage and the Media

Nostalgia for the Light

War Stories

The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict

On Television

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World

Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

Sleep: A Very Short Introduction

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

The Universal Journalist

Fighting for the Rain Forest

Legends of People Myths of State: Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka

Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain

On the Natural History of Destruction

The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan

House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe

Butcher & Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Failure in Afghanistan

Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

They Fought for Each Other: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Hardest Hit Unit in Iraq

The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle against America's Veterans

Madame Dread: A Tale of Love, Vodou, and Civil Strife in Haiti

Columbine

Juvenile

Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.