2024-25 recipient of UAE mental health journalism fellowship announced

Features writer will begin year-long, non-residential fellowship this month

Saeed Saeed has become the latest recipient of a Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship in the UAE. Victor Besa / The National

Saeed Saeed, a features writer for The National, has been awarded a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism in the UAE.

The fellowship programme seeks to improve the quality and accuracy of mental health reporting in the media and is named after Rosalynn Carter, co-founder of the Carter Centre. The National administers the programme in the UAE for the centre, which is a US-based non-profit, non-governmental organisation.

More than 200 journalists from around the world have been awarded fellowships since the programme’s inception in the 1990s. Saeed will receive training from experts and mentors in the US and support from advisers in the UAE. He will begin his year-long, non-residential fellowship this month.

Saeed becomes the tenth journalist in the UAE to be connected to the programme since The National began overseeing the award of fellowships in the UAE in 2018.

His reporting project will focus on the Arabic music scene and attitudes towards mental health within it, now that a new generation of artists are discussing mental health in their creative work and in general discourse.

He will succeed Abeer Khan, who is on staff at Al Arabiya news organisation, and has used her fellowship year to report on the emotional, social and cultural experiences of expatriate fathers from a range of communities in the UAE.