Welcome!

October 3, 2012

By Rebecca Palpant Shimkets

Welcome to the launch of the Mental Health Media Forum (MHMF)! Every aspect of this site is the direct result of feedback from journalists like you, who have an interest in reporting about mental health issues through an informed and in-depth approach. It draws on more than 16 years of experience awarding more than 130 journalists year-long fellowships for mental health reporting. The objective of the MHMF is to provide journalists in all forms of media with timely resources that can increase accurate reporting of mental health including access to expert advice and tools and tips on mental health topics.

The site is loaded with features that will be added to and enhanced on an ongoing basis.

• This blog will include contributions from mental health experts, people with the lived experience of mental illness, stakeholders, policymakers, journalists and others in an effort to generate story ideas and provide the most current information about topics relevant to your mental health reporting.

• Other resources include access to a list of experts on a variety of topics, and links to toolkits and resources for reporting on a number of mental health problems.
• We also will share career opportunities as they are made available to us.

• A password-protected forum that requires membership and credentialing enables you to have conversations with colleagues and experts about topics that are important and relevant to your reporting or multi-media projects. These conversations will be archived and are searchable using keywords for future use by those who may have similar needs.

This site is an outgrowth of the work and expertise of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism (see www.cartercenter.org for more information). As a result, Rosalynn Carter fellows and their projects will be featured from time to time on the home page and a link is provided to a growing archive of mental health reporting completed by Rosalynn Carter fellows during and after their fellowship year. Many journalists have found this archive to be an excellent source for story ideas.

This is just the first phase of a multi-phase project, and we value your feedback as you experience the site. Please contact us at info@mentalhealthjournalism.org with your comments.

It is our hope that you find a community of journalists here with similar interests and that ultimately this forum will play a role in improving the reporting of mental health issues within this new media landscape.