The Global North learns coping skills from the Global South

As 2025 comes to an end, we look back in search of clarity, a pattern, a sign, a hint of hope for 2026. We’ve all been somewhat thrown off balance, collectively and individually, this year. Yet once again, we’re still standing. Journalism is still alive, and its professionals continue to put their whole selves on the line to help us make sense of the madness. That’s why this year’s Mental Health in Journalism Summit focused on “resilience for uncertain times.”

The three-day event, organized by The Self-Investigation, featured 170 speakers from 47 countries across more than 50 sessions — over 30 hours of first-hand stories, practical case studies, and wellbeing strategies to make journalism a healthier industry. But who has 30 hours to watch and learn? Probably not you, and certainly not me.

So we used a bit of AI magic — feeding all the summit transcripts into Google’s NotebookLM — to distill key trends for 2026. This allowed us to pull out practices already implemented alongside pilots and ideas we wish to see become the norm. What stood out most was the immense value in looking beyond traditional centers of power: We have much to learn from regions and countries that have faced decades of crisis and instability, often with limited resources. These trends offer hope and a practical roadmap for creating a healthier journalism industry.

Here they are:

Implementing trauma-informed leadership training: News leaders and editors will undergo training to recognize symptoms of burnout, anxiety, and vicarious trauma in their staff. This proactive approach reinforces that healing is a relational, collective endeavor — not a response to an individual failure.

Adopting flexible, care-centered labor policies: Organizations will expand nontraditional, care-centered policies, including time off for extended caregiving duties (beyond immediate family) and the enforcement of digital boundaries outside work hours. These practices, proven in contexts such as Myanmar and Thailand, help retain women journalists and others facing heavy caregiving burdens.

Developing trauma-aware safety protocols: Safety frameworks will evolve to include psychological health alongside physical and digital security. Emotional harm will be treated with the same seriousness as physical injury, with protocols for managing exposure to distressing content and ensuring freelancers are integrated into risk assessments.

Mandating mental health support parity for freelancers: Major media organizations will commit to providing freelancers with comprehensive mental health resources — including trauma care and access to therapists — acknowledging the severe risks faced by independent journalists working without adequate safety nets.

Formalizing peer support systems: Newsrooms will move beyond reliance on clinical therapy as the sole solution and build structured peer-support networks. Colleagues, trained by professionals to identify stress markers and offer nonjudgmental check-ins, will replicate models already successful at ARIJ (Jordan), the CAJ Peer Support Network (Canada), and community groups in Nigeria.

Adoption of collective healing spaces: Organizations will host regular, non-work gatherings to reduce isolation and normalize sharing struggles. Communal models such as “Wellness Fridays” — practiced by media entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe for female journalists, photojournalists in Peru, and exiled journalists from Myanmar — will offer dedicated spaces for collective restoration.

Shifting to purpose-driven and constructive reporting: Newsrooms will integrate constructive journalism to counter the emotional burden of constant crisis coverage. This solutions- and resilience-focused approach, championed in Nigeria and Ecuador, restores a sense of purpose and alleviates emotional fatigue.

Using media to combat stigma and increase MHPSS literacy: Outlets will invest in public service content focused on mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) to raise awareness and reduce stigma. One example of this is the specialized media in Puerto Rico that has expanded regional mental health literacy since 2019.

Crowdsourcing economic accountability and resource networks: Freelancers will formalize collective strategies to address financial precarity, including shared databases of editor payment rates to expose exploitative actors and crowdsourced pools of professional and psychosocial resources — a trend already emerging in Italy and across Europe.

Developing culturally relevant support: Mental health interventions will broaden beyond traditional Western approaches to include culturally grounded and embodied healing methods, such as yoga and other mind–body practices. Local media platforms will continue to play a central role in promoting accessible, culturally resonant mental health education.