In the 10th edition of the SCARF Media for Mental Health Awards, the Schizophrenia Research Foundation included a new category to recognise non-journalists who wrote articles on mental health. The even for articles published between April 2020 and March 2021 was held virtually on Friday.
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Jaya Sreedhar, chairman of SCARF Media for Mental Health Awards, said the COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in more data being made available that enabled reporters to provide in-depth articles. She called on doctors to “offer access” and urged greater communication among news makers such as doctors, researchers and the media. Sharing data with journalists and explaining how to interpret the data would prevent misreporting, she said.
Unlike in the past, magazines and newspapers provided more space for reports on mental health, said Venkatesh R., editor-in-chief of Pattam, a supplement of the Tamil daily Dina Malar, and co-chairman of the awards. Some articles ran to several thousand words, indicating the importance media houses gave to the subject.
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Former Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary Girija Vaidhyanathan, who was the chief guest at the event, suggested that television news reports be included for the awards. “I was able to read all the articles [that had won awards] and came out a better person,” she said.
The winners are Riddhi Dastidar for her article on the impact of COVID-19 on service-users in India Spend; Sudipta Das for his article on queer affirmative therapy in Feminism in India; and Vinod Kumar Menon of Mid Day for his articles that followed up on the rights of a woman with mental illness who struggled to gain custody of her child.
Among the regional language articles, Sindhuvasini’s article in BBC Hindi on the rights of people with mental illness to insurance benefits and Sijo Pynadath’s article on mental health of children and their care-givers in Deepika Daily, a Malayalam magazine, won the award.
The judges, Mr. Venkatesh and Dr. Jaya, said since some non-journalists had also participated in the contest, they decided to make a special mention of the articles. Sudiksha Jain’s article on the need to end colloquial use of mental health terms and Ayushi Khemka’s journey with anxiety published in Health Collective India received a special mention as they were accepted in the non-journalists category.