“Preserving Atrocity”: Mental Health and the Broadcast Media Archivist

Broadcast news archives are full of traumatic material ranging from war footage, assault, human rights violations, and more. Broadcast media archivists are hired to care for this material. This paper addresses the current state of mental health awareness for archivists working in European broadcast media archives. Quotes are used by archivists on the current mental health training initiatives within their institution. This paper outlines current initiatives that are helping to bring awareness to archivist mental health. An emphasis is placed on person-centered archives to help address difficulties in broadcast media archivist mental health. The paper concludes by outlining mental health strategies for broadcast media archivists.