Winners announced for the Mindset Awards 2024
LONDON, ON, April 14, 2025 /CNW/ - Six winners have been announced by the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma for the Mindset Awards for excellence in mental health reporting in Canada in 2024. They were chosen by independent juries from a total of eight finalists nominated in two categories.
The main award for reporting on the mental health of young people, goes to Luke Galati, with Ashishvangh Contractor, for Dreaming of Better, broadcast by CBC Radio on December 27, 2024. Luke shares his deeply personal story of spending three months in a psychiatric hospital following a bipolar episode. This one-hour special takes listeners on an intimate journey into the realities of living with bipolar disorder. They hear how it's diagnosed, find out what it's like to live with, and learn how people cope through the complexities of regaining stability and finding a path to wellness.
An Honourable Mention in this category goes to Dr. Brian Goldman with Jennifer Warren, Jonathan Ore, and Colleen Ross, for The toll of cannabis-induced psychosis, broadcast by CBC Radio on February 10, 2024. Around one in five young people in Canada (some as young as 16) use cannabis every day. THC is the key psychoactive ingredient in cannabis – and today's high-THC marijuana, available legally in Canada, brings with it very serious mental health risks, especially for young men.
Another Honourable Mention in this category goes to Rachel Browne with Harley Rustad, Mihika Agarwal, Annissa Malthaner, Allison Baker and Carmine Starnino for A Military-Style School for Troubled Teens Became a "Living Nightmare" in The Walrus on August 20, 2024. It revealed that dozens of students aged 12 to 18 had experienced physical, sexual and psychological abuse at the school, which recently announced it is to close due to falling enrolment.
The main award in the workplace category goes to Robert Cribb, with Wendy-Ann Clarke, Declan Keogh and Owen Thompson, for Mind Games – Healing or Harming Generational Wounds, published co-operatively by Investigative Journalism Bureau, TVO, and The Toronto Star on November 1, 2024. The work revealed a discriminatory federal program that has subjected some of Canada's most vulnerable Indigenous people to harm and exploitation.
Reporter Pippa Norman and photographer Kari Medig both win honourable mentions for Thousands of kilometres from the battlefield, these Ukrainian veterans are finding solace in the Canadian woods, published by The Globe and Mail on July 12, 2024. While war continues to cast a shadow over the lives of Ukrainians, this is the story of one Canadian doing what he can to help relieve soldiers' mental trauma from afar.
The awards will be presented at a celebration lunch on Friday, May 30 at the Canadian Association of Journalists national conference in Calgary. Winners will receive their prizes from, and discuss their work in depth with host and freelance journalist Christina Frangou, herself a previous Mindset Award winner.
Both the Mindset Award for Reporting on the Mental Health of Young People and the Mindset Award for Reporting on Workplace Mental Health are sponsored by the B.C. Division of the Canadian Mental Health Association. Sponsors are not involved in the independent adjudication process.
The Forum is an educational charity promoting the physical and psychological well-being of journalists, their audiences and readers, and those about whom they report. The Mental Health Commission of Canada supported the creation of Mindset and En-Tête, Canada's only journalist-to-journalist guides on mental health reporting, over which the Forum has editorial control. Other aspects of the Forum's work, not related to the guides, are supported by The Globe and Mail, CBC News, Sociéte Radio-Canada, Myriad Canada (formerly KBF) and individual donors. Our thanks to CNW for supporting this announcement.
SOURCE Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma
For further information: Please see the Forum website (https://www.journalismforum.ca) or contact Jane Hawkes, the Forum's Executive Producer, at 1-519-852-4946, [email protected]
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