Meet the 2020-2021 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellows »

"Informed journalists can have a significant impact on public understanding of mental health issues as they shape debate and trends with the words and pictures they convey."

-Rosalynn Carter

The Carter Center’s Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism support a diverse cohort of journalists from Latin America, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. Fellows are deeply committed to exploring some of society’s biggest mental health challenges.



The mental health journalism fellowships program was founded in 1996 by former First Lady Rosalynn Carter based on an essential premise: give journalists the resources they need to report on mental health — one of the world’s most underreported health issues — to help dismantle through storytelling the stigma that millions of people face every day.



Over the past two decades, more than 220 journalists from New Zealand, Romania, South Africa, and current participating countries have been awarded the highly-competitive fellowships. Today, our fellows work within their newsrooms and beyond to report on mental health challenges and transform their communities in the process.

Our goals are to:

1. Increase effective and accurate reporting on behavioral health issues

2. Equip journalists with the tools needed to produce high-quality work that reflects an understanding of behavioral health

3. Develop a diverse cohort of better-informed journalists who can more effectively report on behavioral health across evolving and emerging platforms