Winners announced for Mindset and En-Tête Awards for excellence in Canadian mental health reporting in 2025

LONDON, ON, April 30, 2026 /CNW/ - Six winners have been announced in the 2025 Mindset and En-Tête Awards for 2025. Seven more have been awarded Honourable Mentions. The award categories were expanded this year from two to three in each language, with Addictions joining Workplace and Young People. All six categories were adjudicated by independent juries whose makeup included former journalists and non-journalist experts in the subject matter.

For reporting in English, the Mindset Award winners in each of three categories are:

Reporting on the Mental Health of Young People: First prize is awarded to investigative reporter Amy Dempsey Raven and senior health reporter Megan Ogilvie for "Failing Jade", published June 21, 2025 in The Toronto Star. Breaking through "a system designed for secrecy" the reporters documented the last year of the life of Jade, a 15-year-old girl diagnosed with foetal alcohol syndrome. Nominally in the care of a children's aid society, she was housed in a motel room without receiving the treatment she needed and died in a drug house from a fentanyl overdose. The 6,000-word story demonstrated that what happened to Jade was a systemic problem impacting hundreds more Ontario children with complex mental health needs.

An Honourable Mention is awarded to writers Jadine Nagan and Tahmeed Shafiq for "What Happens after a Death on Campus", published on March 4, 2025 in The Walrus. After the death by suicide of a fellow student at the University of Toronto they spent more than two years looking into 62 deaths by suicide at Canadian universities, concluding universities owe students more help than they currently offer. 

Reporting on Workplace Mental Health: First prize is awarded to Dr. Brian Goldman, with producer Stephanie Dubois and senior producer Colleen Ross, for "The air rescue team reinventing first responder support" broadcast on November 28, 2025 on CBC Listen's "White Coat, Black Art". Miles Randell, an advanced care paramedic, is trying to do something different for frontline health-care workers who need a supportive work environment. He says years of working as a paramedic in Vancouver led to post-traumatic stress injuries that left him unemployable, and that the help he needed wasn't there. So he created TEAAM (Technical Evacuation Advanced Aero Medical), a non-profit that deploys helicopters to provide advanced life support in some of the most rugged locations in B.C.'s wilderness. TEAAM is also a workplace where health-care workers are encouraged to regularly check-in and talk about work stress after a call.

An Honourable Mention is awarded to Zosia Bielski for "The rest is yet to come", published in The Globe and Mail on February 14, 2025. The feature examines a deep cultural aversion toward rest in Canada, and how the inability to take rest seriously corrodes our mental health and our work, intensifying burnout.

Reporting on Addictions: First prize in this new category is awarded to Dr. Brian Goldman, with Jennifer Warren and Colleen Ross, for "The treatment centre that grief built", broadcast on CBC Listen's White Coat, Black Art on May 3, 2025. It explores addiction and recovery through the deeply personal lens of sportscaster-turned-advocate Scott Oake, whose 25-year-old son Bruce died of an overdose in 2011 after years grappling with substance addiction. Listeners are taken inside the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre in Winnipeg, a residential and outpatient treatment facility for men founded by Scott and his late wife Anne in Bruce's memory. The reporting shows how the centre has materially improved recovery outcomes: one-year post-treatment, 75% of participants are employed, and nearly all have stable housing--significant gains compared to pre-treatment baselines. The program was broadcast in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2.

An Honourable Mention goes to Steven D'Souza with Eva Uguen-Csenge, Shelley Ayres, Emmanuel Marchand & Allya Davidson, CBC the fifth estate, for The Political War on Safe Drugs, broadcast on November 13,2025. Canada's opioid crisis has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, costing the health and justice systems billions.

The Mindset awards for mental health reporting in 2025 will be celebrated and discussed in detail at a lunch event during the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Journalists at Carleton University in Ottawa on Friday, June 12, hosted by journalist and educator Adrian Harewood.

For work in French, the prix En-Tête winners are:

Reporting on Addictions: First prize is awarded to Caroline Touzin, of La Presse, for Homeless Deaths: A Tragic Record in Quebec: a series of three articles including "It's as if she was broken," all published on September 16, 2025.

Her investigation revealed that at least 108 people died while homeless in Quebec in 2024, and that approximately half of them succumbed to an accidental overdose. The reporter chose to illustrate this grim revelation with the story of 26-year-old Roselie. She is one of the "new faces" of the crisis, far removed from the image of the old man with a shaggy beard begging on the street corner. Her mother, Colette Lelièvre, agreed to speak with La Presse to emphasize that her child could be yours.

An Honourable Mention in the addictions category is awarded to Amélie Mouton, for "Leaving the north, getting lost in the south" for Radio-Canada/Espaces autochtones, published on November 13, 2025. Amélie's extensive investigation retraces the life of Elisapee Pootootgook, an Inuk woman from Salluit, Nunavik, who was found dead near Cabot Square in Montreal in November 2021. It sheds light on the circumstances surrounding her death, going beyond the image of a homeless woman lost in alcohol, the kind that passersby encounter regularly in Montreal. The article took issue with conclusions drawn by the coroner, who ruled it a case of "natural death."

Reporting on Workplace Mental Health: First prize goes to Alexis Gacon for "Bipolar at work", broadcast on June 8 2025 on Ici Radio-Canada Première. The report explores the realities of the working world for people living with bipolar disorder. It highlights a growing understanding and acceptance of this condition, driven by a gradual shift in how people speak out. It also underscores persistent obstacles linked to stigma: employers who are often poorly informed, and whose misunderstandings can exacerbate the precarious situation and health of those affected.

An Honourable Mention in the workplace category is awarded to Danny Lemieux of Radio-Canada (TV), emission Découverte: Surviving a terrorist attack. Terrorist attacks on workplaces in Paris on November 13, 2015 claimed the lives of 133 people and injured 413. A few months after this tragedy, some 200 volunteers, mostly young survivors and witnesses, were followed by researchers to discover how the process of resilience develops in the brain. Scientists observed that resilience is a complex mechanism that goes far beyond willpower. After 10 years of analysis, here are the results of an incredible study on the brains of people who have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Reporting on the Mental Health of Young People: First prize goes to Denis Wong of Radio-Canada's Récites numériques for "I was no longer human: these men were broken by sexual violence", published on January 27, 2025. One in ten men in Canada has been a victim of sexual assault during their childhood or adolescence. These men's stories are often minimized and even ridiculed, especially if they were assaulted by a woman. In the Laurentians, an organization is breaking persistent taboos by offering a 57-session group therapy program, the longest of its kind in Quebec, and the results are impressing both participants and experts.

An Honourable Mention prize in this category is awarded to Marine Corniou for My psychologist is an AI, published on August 22, 2025 in the magazine Quebec Science. It examines the growing use of chatbots as mental health support, particularly among young people, due to the accessibility and low cost of these AI tools. It addresses the medical and ethical issues associated with this largely unregulated use.

Another Honourable Mention goes to Florence Morin-Martel for « Avoir une belle vie » après la psychose in Le Devoir, September 6, 2025. To break down prejudices, a young man agreed to let Le Devoir attend his meetings with his care team.

Les prix En-Tête will be celebrated in Montréal on the evening of June 9th, with Raymond Saint-Pierre making the presentations and leading discussion of the winning work.

The Mindset and En-Tête awards are sponsored by the B.C. Division of the Canadian Mental Health Association. Three editions of the printed guides for reporting on mental health were produced with financial support from the Mental Health Commission of Canada. The Forum retained full editorial responsibility for the content.

Some of the Forum's activities are supported by CBC News, Société Radio-Canada, The Globe and Mail, Myriad Canada, and individual donors. We thank CNW for publishing this release.

SOURCE Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma

For more information in English, please visit www.mindset-mediaguide.ca or contact Jane Hawkes, Executive Producer, Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma, at [phone], [email protected]. En français, veuillez visiter www.en-tete.ca ou contacter Lise Villeneuve au [phone], [email protected]