Latest recipient of UAE mental health journalism fellowship announced

Reporter will begin the year-long, non-residential programme next month

Abeer Khan, mental health journalism fellow Photo: Abeer Khan

Abeer Khan, a journalist for Al Arabiya English, has been awarded a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism in the UAE.

The programme seeks to improve the quality of mental health reporting in the media and is named after Rosalynn Carter, co-founder of the Carter Centre, who has been an influential voice in the field of mental health for decades.

The National administers the programme in the UAE for the Carter Centre, a US-based non-profit, non-governmental organisation.

Khan will receive intensive training from experts and mentors in the US and support from an advisory board in the UAE to help her accurately report on mental health. She will begin her year-long, non-residential fellowship next month. Her reporting will focus on the mental health of expatriate fathers who are living apart from their families or away from their normal support networks.

More than 200 journalists from around the world have been awarded fellowships since the programme’s inception in the 1990s.

Khan becomes the ninth journalist in the UAE to be connected to the programme since The National began overseeing the award of fellowships in the UAE five years ago.

Before Al Arabiya, Khan was a CNN Academy Abu Dhabi fellow and has worked for Time Out Dubai. She is an alumna of the American University of Sharjah.

Khan will succeed Jenna Kleinwort and Fatima Al Mahmoud as UAE fellows.

Kleinwort is a freelance journalist who has been reporting on the people at the forefront of the mental health landscape in the UAE during her fellowship year.

Al Mahmoud, a social media journalist at The National, has been working on pieces about first responders and mental health, as well as reporting on trauma.