Applications now being accepted for Mindset Award for Workplace Mental Health Reporting

LONDON, ON, Jan. 21, 2019 /CNW/ - Applications open today for the Mindset Award for Workplace Mental Health Reporting, offering a prize of $1,000 for excellent Canadian journalism on the subject in English in 2018.

Applications are also open for the French equivalent, le prix En-Tête pour le reportage en santé mentale au travail, which also carries a $1,000 prize. 

There is no application fee. Online applications for both awards will close on February 15.

This is the first year in which two separate awards have been available. Journalists working in either language previously competed for a single award.

"The change was made possible by the generosity of the sponsor, the Great-West Life Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace," said Forum president Cliff Lonsdale. "There are differences between the journalistic styles and traditions of English and French media in Canada. Having two equal awards, with separate juries working in their own first language, levels the playing field and enlarges it as well." 

The awards are named for the English and French versions of Canada's leading guide to mental health reporting, written and published by the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma. The guide is called Mindset in English and En-Tête in French. More than 7,000 copies have been distributed to newsrooms and journalism schools across the country since 2014. 

The 2018 Mindset award will be presented at the awards gala of the Canadian Association of Journalists in Winnipeg on May 4. The En-Tête award will be presented in Montreal on May 5 at the awards gala of la Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec. 

The competitions are open to journalists writing or broadcasting in the designated language anywhere in Canada, for work first published or broadcast in Canada during 2018.  

"These awards will be given to both English and French journalists who excel in ethical and stigma-free reporting on mental health issues in the workplace," said Mary Ann Baynton, Program Director, the Great-West Life Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace. "There has been an increase in reporting on mental health stories across the country in recent years, and we sponsor this award because we want to help encourage integrity in journalism and to share these stories more widely."

Development and production of Mindset and En-Tête was supported by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, with funding provided by Health Canada, and by CBC News. The Forum has editorial control of content. 

"Despite the growing attention mental health has received in the past few years," Mr. Lonsdale said, "it remains very much the poor relation in our health care system. Yet pretty much every Canadian, including many journalists themselves, will be affected by mental illness at some point in their lives. 

"We encourage journalists to engage with this issue as energetically as they do any other, treating the people involved with empathy and respect. It's no longer a no-go area for serious journalistic enquiry."  

This pair of awards is intended to set the pattern for an expansion of the Mindset and En-Tête awards family as more sponsors are found. New awards will focus on reporting on other topics addressed in the guides, such as youth mental health, suicide and the mental health of Indigenous peoples. 

The Forum is an educational charity concerned with the physical and emotional wellbeing of journalists, their audiences and those on whom they report. Its work is supported by The Globe and Mail, CBC News, Radio Canada and Cision.

Our thanks to Cision and CNW for supporting this announcement.

SOURCE Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma