Every day, the public’s understanding of mental health issues is shaped by print, online press and broadcast media, as well as by the arts.  The purpose of this colloquy is to recognize and encourage the media’s sophisticated, accessible work on mental health issues and to learn about the various considerations the media faces in carrying out this work.  The colloquy will feature three esteemed contributors – recipients of the Erikson Institute Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Coverage by the Media - who have brought nuance, compassion and rigor to their reporting. 

Andrew Solomon is a writer and lecturer on psychology, politics, and the arts, known for his lyricism, erudition, frankness about his own experience, and tireless research into the lives of others. Solomon’s most recent book, Far From The Tree, explores the relationship between parents and their exceptional children, including those with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple severe disabilities; those who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, and who are transgender. Named one of the ten best books of 2012 by The New York Times, it also won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Solomon’s previous book, The Noonday Demon, published in 2001, earned great acclaim for its thorough exploration of depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. It won the National Book Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and was named by the Times of London as one of the hundred best books of the decade. A contributor to The New Yorker and other magazines, Solomon has appeared on The Moth Radio Hour. His TedTalk on depression has earned nearly two million views. He lives in London and New York City.

Scott Stossel is the editor of The Atlantic magazine and the author of the New York Times bestseller My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind. Given Stossel’s award-winning tenure at The Atlantic, and his many incisive essays and articles for leading publications, it came as a surprise to many colleagues that he has long been, as he writes in his book, “a twitchy bundle of phobias, fears and neuroses.” This revelation serves a broader agenda, as Stossel examines anxiety in all its manifestations, personal, historical, psychological, and neurological. The New York Times called the My Age of Anxiety “ambitious and bravely intimate: a ruminative book that often breaks into a thrilling intellectual chase.” Also the author of Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver, Stossel lives in Washington, D.C.

David Finkel is an investigative reporter on staff at The Washington Post. He is the author of The Good Soldiers, a chronicle of the 15-month deployment of the Second Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment to Baghdad in the Iraq War, and Thank You For Your Service, which follows some members of the same regiment, as well as family members and caretakers, as they navigate home life in the midst of grievous psychological wounds. The New York Times called The Good Soldiers “a post-heroic ‘Iliad’ for the Iraq war” and Thank You For Your Service “an equally cogent ‘Odyssey.’” Finkel’s honors include a Robert F. Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism, a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, a J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, and a shortlist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He was a 2012 MacArthur Fellow. He lives in the Washington, DC area.