A countrywide study conducted by the Centre for Excellence in Journalism (CEJ), Karachi has revealed that half of the journalists in the megacity suffer from anxiety. The report is based on data collected by the school over the past three years. Anxiety has been defined as extreme phobia and fear emanating from worries over whether one will succeed in coming up to the expectations of one’s boss and whether he or she would carry out an assigned task better than their peers. The sufferers include reporters, anchors and all those engaged in news gathering, sifting the relevant matter from the irrelevant and editing them. Considering the growing competition in the profession and the ever-increasing number of people joining the profession, all the afore-mentioned are vulnerable to anxiety and depression. Work-related stresses and pressures are ever on the rise.
Realising the need for providing help to media persons suffering from anxiety or exposed to it, the CEJ started to provide free counseling service to them from 2018 at its Wellbeing Centre. The study has found that anxiety affects men and women of all ages in the profession. It was ensured that journalists don’t come across one another while going in for counseling sessions in view of the social stigma attached to even minor mental health issues. Psychologists at the Wellbeing Centre give primacy to establishing trust with their clients. Trust between the counselor and the client is essential as this removes inhibition in the latter enabling them to tell their entire story to the former. The study made other important revelations like 37 out of the 90 journalists from Karachi who came for counseling had been working in the profession between one and five years and more men sought psychological counseling than women.
Now there is increasing competition in all professions. Besides biological factors, it is the feeling of loneliness that causes anxiety disorder. This is for society to give a helping hand to individuals feeling lonely.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 24th, 2021.
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