Journalist Sean Carberry discusses mental toll of war correspondence at Headliners book talk

Mark Krikorian

August 21, 2023

As a war correspondent your job is “consuming death, pain, and destruction and communicating that,” according to Sean Carberry, author of "Passport Stamps: Searching the World for a War to Call Home."

“When you’re in the moment, in the flow, you’re staying a step ahead of this stuff catching up with you,” he said. Once he returned to the United States, it caught up with him — emotionally.

Carberry discussed his seven years as a radio journalist covering conflicts on four continents at a Headliners Book Rap on Thursday, August 17. In the discussion led by Club Vice President Emily Wilkins, Carberry said the emotional toll of covering conflicts can be similar to that faced by soldiers and first responders.

National Press Club Vice President Emily Wilkins (left) interviewed author Sean Carberry at the Club event. Photo: Noël-Marie Fletcher

Carberry recalled an attack on a popular Lebanese restaurant in January 2014 in Kabul as a pivotal time time for him as NPR’s Kabul correspondent. “That night was a difficult thing to get through because a lot of friends were there and didn’t survive," he said.

Carberry said he hopes the book might help “start the follow-on conversation around the mental health impact of this work and importance of recognizing that and providing much more resources and awareness.”

“I saw a lot of my colleagues have breakdowns of some kind out in the field,” he said, adding that many of his colleagues coped with the traumatic nature of the work by abusing alcohol and drugs.

Club members, aspiring journalists and others filled the Club room to near capacity. Photo: Noël-Marie Fletcher

Carberry faulted news organizations for not providing war correspondents with adequate preparation for what they might encounter or mandatory post-conflict mental health services. “I didn’t have hostile environment training until about four years into doing this work,” he said. “But even in those courses, they’re not focusing on the mental or psychological aspects.”

After traumatic incidents, he said, “there were a couple of times when someone in Washington would say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a guy you can call.’ …To be honest, it felt like a box-checking exercise.”

He compared that “procedural” approach of offering voluntary counseling to police officers often being required to get counseling after a shooting.

Carberry said that for returning war correspondents, “some kind of mandatory re-entry process would be good on multiple levels. One is because you normalize it, you make everyone go through it, so there’s no stigma.”

“If you’re going to send someone off to a dangerous assignment, there is an obligation in having some kind of re-entry process,” Carberry said.