Turning the Tables: Young Journalists Ask the Moms about Mental Illness Issues (Ep. 81)

Youthcast Media Group (formerly Urban Health Media Project) trains high school students from under-resourced communities to report, write, and broadcast stories about health and social issues that affect their neighborhoods and cities. 

The goal is to help students better understand and communicate about health issues and disparities that directly affect them, and to foster a generation of diverse journalists that will enter and enrich news organizations across the country.

The students learn to harness the power of their voices as journalists to share the rich experiences of their communities in a way that honors, informs and empowers.

And today, they turn the tables to ask the 3 Moms the questions that matter to them - as youth, and as journalists.

The founder Jayne O’Donnell, is on a plane and couldn’t join us, but we do have producer/instructor Marianne O’Hare .

O’Donnell  won numerous awards in her nearly 30 years as an investigative reporter (broke the story on how early airbags were harming small children - which led to the industry standard changing) and later health care journalist at USA Today. She founded Youthcast Media Group about 6 years ago, understanding that people in underserved communities are more impacted by the social determinants of health. And that it was important to provide the tools of journalism to inspire young people from these communities to shine a light on issues impacting their lives and their futures.

Our High School Journalists:

1)     Carmah Owen: Freshman at Herndon High School, Herndon Virginia. Recently joined as a student contributor to YMG. She is just embarking on her journalism training journey. 

2)     Safa Janjua: She is a sophomore at Herndon High School in Herndon, Virginia. She recently joined the Youthcast Media Group and is producing social media posts on topics around mental health and distracted driving. She’s not sure what her college major will be yet. But she thinks her dream job would be in photography. 

3)     Kayla Johnson – is a Senior at Christo Rey High School in Philadelphia. She loves to read, write, cook and do art – anything that allows her to showcase her creativity. She has been producing content for the Youthcast Media Group on topics such as distracted driving and the decriminalization of mental illness. She is the president of several clubs at her high school and is looking forward to studying broadcast communications or public relations in college.  She’s applied to several colleges including Howard University and Princeton.

They ask:

1)    Could you help us understand what that diagnosis really means - and why it’s so devastating?

 2)   What’s it like from their perspective? How do they describe what it feels like to them? Delusions. Voices. It must be so terrifying for them. 

3)    And what you think is wrong about how our system responds to mental illness? How do we ‘decriminalize’ it?

 4)     You all write about how you had to deal with the fact that sometimes, during psychotic episodes – when they were having delusions - your sons have threatened violence, against you, or themselves, or others. How have you learned to handle that phase of the illness?  It must be so frightening. How do you protect yourselves as well as t

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Randye Kaye
Mindy Greiling
Miriam (Mimi) Feldman