How journalists can take care of their mental health while covering heavy topics

Advice from Nissa Rhee, executive director at Borderless Magazine, a nonprofit nonpartisan news outlet reporting on and with immigrants.

Rhee: The mental health crisis in journalism is real and heavy. That’s the first step, acknowledging that it’s even a thing.

I’ve been a journalist for 19 years, and I remember in my first job, one of my bosses telling me, “Don’t cry. You have to toughen up.” And so that was then.

In the last month at Borderless, there have been a lot of tears, and that’s okay.

Part of what we’re doing here — and what I see at other nonprofit news outlets that we’re close to — is we are all working really hard for a culture shift inside newsrooms to push away from this old school, “toughen up kid” toxicness. We’re all people, and we’re all bringing ourselves to the work, which is great.   

At Borderless, we have an extremely diverse staff. Our team speaks about a dozen languages, which is such a superpower. But at the same time, these issues that we’re all reporting on touch everyone — individually or their families. You can’t just ignore that. So it’s real, and everyone really cares deeply about journalism and the work. 

Especially at this moment, there are so many threats against journalists — it’s heavy and scary. What we’re trying to do is acknowledge that if it feels heavy and hard, sad and scary, that’s because it is. We’re not imagining this. It is a really heavy moment, and we have to leave room for us to process those feelings.

So sometimes we’ll be sad. Sometimes we’ll be angry. And that’s okay. That is a much healthier and safer environment than to just ignore it and burn out.”

Read more tips from Rhee on covering immigrant communities in 2025.