Journalists and substance use: A systematic literature review

Journalists and Depressive Symptoms: A Systematic Literature Review

Mental health research focusing on journalists has largely tended to give precedence to trauma exposure and subsequent symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. However, there are several occupational factors that may be associated with the development of depressive symptoms in journalists. This systematic literature review aims to provide a concise, comprehensive, and systematic review of the quantitative literature relating to journalists' experiences of depressive symptoms. The systematic literature review method adopted was based on that prescribed by Fink and contains three main elements: sampling the literature, screening the literature, and extracting data. Key terms were developed and used to source appropriate studies from several electronic databases, a hand search of reference lists was conducted, and authors were contacted to suggest examples of their own work not yet sampled. The sample included 13 quantitative studies reported in English language. Journalists most at risk of experiencing depressive symptoms had (1) greater exposure to work-related and personal trauma, (2) experienced threats to themselves or their family, and (3) reduced levels of family and peer support, social acknowledgment, and education. An area for further investigation is the prevalence and experiences of specific depressive disorders within the journalist population. There are a number of theoretical and methodological issues that can be addressed in future research.

Ecuadorian Journalists Mental Health Influence on Changing Job Desire: A Cross Sectional Study

Journalist’s mental health could predict their job change. This study aims at determining the prevalence of mental health issues and their association with perception of aptitude for covering emergencies and difficulty in seeing a corpse, and also to determine the mental health factors associated with job change. An ad hoc survey, GHQ-28 (Somatization, Anxiety-Insomnia, Social Dysfunction, Depression), MBI-P (Burnout, Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, personal accomplishment) and Brief scale to diagnose Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Suicide Risk were applied to 196 journalists (female = 51.6%). Descriptive analysis, correlations (Pearson and Spearman), T-test and binary logistic regression were performed. It was found that one third part of journalists perceive themselves as having low aptitude to cover emergencies and difficulty in seeing a corpse, 17.3% would consider changing jobs and 42.1% could only access free mental health services. The most frequent mental health problems are: low personal accomplishment, emotional exhaustion and post-traumatic stress disorder (11.2 to 17.3%). People who want to change jobs present more: social dysfunction, depression, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, low personal accomplishment, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide risk. The two mental health factors associated with desire of changing jobs are high emotional exhaustion, and low personal accomplishment. These results guide the psychosocial risk prevention processes for journalists, as well as the training needs that universities could consider to protect the mental health of this vulnerable group.