Serhiy Perebyinis describes to CNN’s Erin Burnett the moment he found out that his wife and two children had been killed after recognizing them in a graphic photo on Twitter

CNN

When you watch the video on the link above, you’ll see a photo that most of the world had seen of a family killed in Ukraine, laying on the street. It is his family. He didn’t know it happened until he saw the image on Twitter.

Erin Burnett, became the story to many of us because if you have not seen what this, or other events do to them, then you fail to see just how human all of them are. They have jobs to do to make sure we know what is going on. Unlike what Putin is doing with his fairytales and wild accusations, the world is seeing it because reporters put their lives, and hearts, on the line.

There is an under-reported on story and that is when reporters get hit by PTSD and what they are sent to report on.

“If you do this, I will own you forever.” 

That is from

The Essential Value—and Deep Cost—of Reporting From War

Dan O’Brien on His Friendship With Conflict Journalist Paul Watson

Why didn’t he commit to more intensive and prolonged treatment? He was succumbing to the common conception of mental illness as a moral weakness, a stigma even more onerous in his line of work. The fact of his diagnosis, he believed, had to be kept secret, and maintaining a regiment of regular in-person therapy would have been impractical and likely conspicuous. According to Paul, any war reporter with known psychological infirmities will be perceived as a danger in the field to those around them—fixers, interpreters, colleagues.

That said, most reporters don’t claim to be traumatized by their experiences of war, at least not in any clinical sense. The psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein in Journalists under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War estimates that only about 20 percent of combat journalists suffer from PTSD, which would of course be an unacceptably high percentage in almost any other occupation. But Paul wonders how many of these journalists are lying (or lying to themselves) when they deny symptoms of the disorder.

Dan O’Brien

The article itself is well worth the read especially if you are paying attention to the news, or any reports when reporters put their lives on the line and end up with their hearts on their sleeves. The truth is, they are becoming another casualty. It isn’t that reporters facing PTSD is anything new. They used to hide it well, ignore it even better and buried it harder.

The good news is, more studies are being done on PTSD hitting those who dare to tell the stories that test their humanity.

Studies have found that, depending on the journalists’ beats or work locations, 4% to 59% have symptoms of PTSD, according to the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, a project of Columbia Journalism School, advocating for better media coverage of trauma and researching the psychological impact of reporting on traumatic events.

Journalists are under stress. What’s the solution? Naseem S. Miller 

It is for this reason the main character in The Lost Son was a reporter.

When you least expect a miracle they walk in the door. That is what Chris discovered when he needed a miracle but did not feel as if he deserved one. He was fighting a battle with PTSD and it was wining. The scars on his body were reminders of what he survived but the scars in his soul were reminders of why he didn’t want to anymore. The condo in LA with his office covered with awards, was no longer his and he was living in a studio apartment back in Salem Massachusetts. His marriage ended when his ex-wife tried to kill him and then stalked him. All his friends were out of his life except his favorite bartender at a local bar.

Chris thought everyone he knew burned down the bridges between them and him. He couldn’t see he was the one with all the matches and his friends were trying to find the firehose. He was right about one thing. Seven years was too long for him to be suffering instead of healing, but God had other plans for him. That night, Chris was sent on a mission to save himself and millions of others when he discovered a secretive society changing the world one soul at a time.

Seven years was long enough. He sat on his bed with a gun in his hand while a war between hope and despair kept him from lifting the gun to his head. He gave up and went to the bar figuring that if he got drunk enough, he wouldn’t have to think about anything much longer.

Chris thought everyone he knew burned down the bridges between them and him. He couldn’t see he was the one with all the matches and his friends were trying to find the firehose. Chris was dismissing the fact he had PTSD. He was right about one thing. Seven years was too long for him to be suffering instead of healing, but God had other plans for him. That night, Chris was sent on a mission to save himself and millions of others when he discovered a secretive society changing the world one soul at a time.

This is for the “churchless” children of God so you will know, that miracles do not come from a church, but they come from God.

The Lost Son by Kathie Costos

If anyone knew what it was like to suffer, it was Chris. If anyone was a great reporter, it was Chris. If anyone was able to tell the story of suffering, it was him. If anyone was able to tell the story of healing and giving hope to the world, it was him. After all, who better to tell the story the whole world needs to hear, than a reporter?

UPDATE

“About a quarter of Mariupol’s 430,000 residents left in those first days, while they still could. But few people believed a war was coming, and by the time most realized their mistake, it was too late.”

20 Days in Mariupol: The Team that documented city’s agony (AP) Mstyslav Chernov

MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — The Russians were hunting us down. They had a list of names, including ours, and they were closing in. 

We were the only international journalists left in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, and we had been documenting its siege by Russian troops for more than two weeks. We were reporting inside the hospital when gunmen began stalking the corridors. Surgeons gave us white scrubs to wear as camouflage.

Suddenly at dawn, a dozen soldiers burst in: “Where are the journalists, for fuck’s sake?” 

I looked at their armbands, blue for Ukraine, and tried to calculate the odds that they were Russians in disguise. I stepped forward to identify myself. “We’re here to get you out,” they said. 

The walls of the surgery shook from artillery and machine gun fire outside, and it seemed safer to stay inside. But the Ukrainian soldiers were under orders to take us with them.

20 Days in Mariupol

If you want to know what else they go through, and what else they end up taking with them, read the report on AP and look at the pictures. When you dare to, and read the article, you’ll understand, not just how survivors end up with trauma wounds in their souls, but the reporters as well.