Reuters supports journalist mental health with worldwide rollout of Mindarma
To help boost psychological resilience amongst its international network of journalists, Reuters has adopted a new e-learning program from mindarma.com. Reuters is offering the program to its 2,600 journalists spread across more than 200 locations around the world as part of a broader focus on the mental health and wellbeing of its staff.
Reuters is the world’s largest multimedia news provider. Its text reporters, photographers, camera operators and editing staff work in an exceptionally fast-paced, deadline driven environment. Reuters journalists cover wars, civil unrest, terrorism, natural disasters and major accidents. Some of its staff edit footage and photographs that contain distressing images.
Real-time coverage of financial news can also be highly stressful, especially in times of crisis. With Reuters playing a critical role in disseminating market information, the need for speed and accuracy creates unique demands on its journalists.
The company wants its journalists to get a better understanding of stress and learn good coping strategies.
“It’s important we build resilience because of the demands of our jobs,” says Dean Yates, Reuters head of mental health and wellbeing strategy. “The 24/7 news cycle, non-stop emails and the need to be vigilant for the next breaking story means we rarely switch off.”
Mindarma will help Reuters journalists utilise mindfulness and a range of other practical strategies they can apply in all sorts of challenging situations.
Psychologist Sadhbh Joyce developed Mindarma to equip workers in high stress roles with a range of vital psychological skills. The program includes 10 short interactive sessions in which learners discover a range of different strategies to help them better cope with difficult thoughts, uncomfortable emotions and times of high stress. Users learn mindfulness, discover practical self-care strategies and develop a personal plan of action to help them handle the most difficult days on the job. Mindarma users can also access guided mindfulness exercises and a large library of mental health resources.
As part of her research with the UNSW Workplace Mental Health Team and the Black Dog Institute, Joyce has worked with Australian emergency service personnel to evaluate the effectiveness of online learning in building psychological resilience. “An e-learning approach can be quite successful in teaching psychological skills and it also removes many of the practical barriers. For organisations like Reuters we can now cost-effectively deliver training to a large workforce spread across some of the most far-flung locations in the world,” says Joyce.
Mindarma is developing a growing user-base, with clients across a diverse range of industries including health, emergency services, education, communications and financial services using the program to support their workers and protect their mental health.