Recipients of 2025-26 UAE mental health journalism fellowships announced
The fellowship programme seeks to improve the quality of mental health reporting in the media and is named after the late Rosalynn Carter, co-founder of the Carter Centre, who was an influential voice in the field of mental health for decades.
The National administers the scheme in the UAE for the Carter Centre, a US-based non-profit, non-governmental organisation.
Yehia and Ibrahim will begin their year-long, non-residential fellowship later this year. They will receive intensive training from experts and mentors in the US and support from advisers in the UAE to help them accurately report on mental health.
During her fellowship year, Ibrahim plans to document how young people in the UAE are turning to artificial intelligence for emotional support, including chatbots, journaling apps and AI companions. She will explore the mental health implications of relying on these tools and what that may reveal about the future of care in the region. Her reporting will be published by The National.
Yehia writes a column for Khaleej Times wknd magazine, where she covers mental health issues and how they intersect with everyday life. Her fellowship project work will be a multi-part series exploring the emotional and ethical impact of 'grief tech'. She will investigate how AI-powered simulations of the deceased are reshaping the way we grieve and what that means for mental health.
They will succeed Saeed Saeed, a features writer for The National, as UAE mental health journalism fellows. His fellowship reporting project looked at the Arabic music scene and attitudes towards mental health within the industry. His work over the past year has documented a movement towards what he describes as an increased 'emotional transparency' among artists and musicians.
Previous UAE fellows have contributed stories across a wide variety of mental health subjects, including documenting the lived realities of expatriate fathers in the region, reporting on conflict and trauma and examining mental health provision in education.
More than 200 journalists from around the world have been awarded fellowships since the programme's inception in the 1990s.
With this year's appointments, 12 journalists have been awarded fellowships in the UAE since The National became custodian of the country programme in 2018.
Applications for the next UAE round of Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism are expected to open early in 2026. Full details of the programme can be found by following the link marked Rosalynn Carter Fellowship at the foot of The National 's homepage.
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