Mexican Women Journalists Are Suffering a National Mental Health Crisis

The machismo attitude within the media, combined with the lack of protection, leads to neglect toward their well-being

A woman with writing on her face that reads ‘no to silence’ looks at the camera during a demonstration to end violence against journalists in Mexico. Photo: Miguel Tovar/Getty Images

In the summer of 2017, Melva Frutos, Inés García, and Miriam Ramírez attended a holistic security workshop for female journalists in a rustic hacienda along the outskirts of Oaxaca City in southern Mexico. Surrounded by picturesque gardens and century-old trees, they shared their reporting experiences as if they’d known each other before and expressed diverse “sensations” they’ve been experiencing for the past years. “Symptoms” was not a word they used. Rather anxiety, mistrust, hypervigilance, isolation, insomnia, depression, and emotional detachment were new additions to their lives to which they simply had to conform. But it wasn’t until that weekend in July that they learned whatever was happening to them individually was also happening to other colleagues.

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries for journalists due to the current climate of violence and the government’s failure to address impunity in attacks on journalists. Despite his pledge to protect the press, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has also been using rhetoric to attack it, which is often reproduced by state and local…