MindSite News Turns Five

From the archives…

Among the stories we published when we launched was this one about the difficulties students were having adjusting to school after being isolated for more than a year.

On September 29, 2021, after six months of back-yard planning sessions (to avoid wearing masks), teaching ourselves how to mute and unmute on Zoom calls (we still sometimes forget), registering a website domain (we only had to change it once), and assigning a baker’s dozen launch stories (all of them completed and published), the MindSite News website went public for the first time. In our founding editorial, Welcome to MindSite News, we wrote about what had prompted the three founders – Rob Waters, Diana Hembree and Tom Insel – to start a new journalism organization focused on mental health.

“The U.S. and much of the world is in the midst of a deepening and poorly understood mental health crisis – a crisis that was festering long before the COVID-19 pandemic,” we proclaimed.

“The time is ripe – indeed, it is long past due – for a new journalism enterprise dedicated to covering this landscape with passion and rigor. We believe this is exactly the right moment for such a publication, and we are pleased to introduce MindSite News, a digital news publication that will expose and define the mental health crisis in America — and help point the way to solutions.

We invite you to join us on this journey and become readers, subscribers and supporters of MindSite News. We will work hard to earn your trust.”

In the 13 stories we published over the next two days, we looked at the coming 988 crisis line, explored the ways schools were coping as they brought children back in-person to classrooms, profiled two suicide prevention specialsts, a mental health activist who advocates for “mad Black pride” and a Vietnamese refugee and psychologist working with Afghan refugees. We also published a review of a hit Australian TV series about a psych ward, examined the unique, community-oriented mental health system of Trieste, Italy and released our first major investigation, “The Lockdown Inside the Lockdown.” That investigation examined the horrendous isolation practices that were being imposed on young people in juvenile detention facilities and triggering a rash of suicide attempts. It was co-published by USA Today – a preview of the collaboration strategy we have pursued ever since.

Five years and more than 1,500 articles later, MindSite News stories have been republished by dozens of different news outlets around the country and the world, and we have been honored with 35 (and counting) journalism awards.

Over the coming months, we will mark this milestone by announcing some new initiatives and developments and seeking support to help us plan for the next five years. And we will continue “to work hard to earn your trust“ by giving mental health the attention it merits.