Talking about Mental Health preservation during Investigative work.
For many people, the face of warfare and investigative work has changed significantly. With the uptake in technology comes options around remote work and citizen journalism paired with social media brings instant news, analysis and connection delivered straight to our device of choice.
The development of Open Source Intelligence skill sets means that there’s plenty of skilled “hobby” analysts who hone their skills by developing and cultivating strategies around collecting and analyzing open source intelligence. While it’s fair to say a single civilian analyst can do some serious damage with a single laptop and an internet connection, it’s also fair to say that depending on your lines of inquiry, there’s a good chance of being damaged back.
While managing mental health has been covered by others previously, including this great article by Bellingcat, today we’ll put our own spin on it and look at and discuss strategies for managing mental health during open source investigations.
The Impacts
The evolution of the internet and social media means that anyone engaging faces the risk of being exposed to traumatic content as some point. However as open source analysts looking into the fields of defense, politics and conflict, it’s fair to say that the risk of these individuals is greater than the average. While it may vary depending on the type of work you do, if you focus on conflict or defense analysis there’s a good chance you may come across things you can’t un see.
While the material that can cause trauma is vast, some good examples of what you might find may be combat footage, propaganda or media when vulnerable members of the population may be at direct risk of harm.
It’s fair to say that at this point though, the field of open source intelligence is pretty vast and often contributes a lot to understanding what’s occurring during times of crisis and other critical events. Things like validating media, geo location of clips and even analyzing propaganda are vitally important to keeping disinformation in check. So if we accept that this has an important role to play BUT we also acknowledge the fact we may see harmful content, then it quickly becomes clear that having strategies in place for managing mental health during inquiries becomes an essential part of our workflow. Not only does it help preserve our mental health and well being, but it also gives us the best chance of being objective and conducting inquiries in a way that doesn’t bias us toward a particular perspective. While any media is subject to individual interpretation, as analysts we want to let the media or data do the talking and simply interpret the details as they are seen.
However mental health isn’t a one step solution. It’s something that you have to manage across the board, with habits, training, boundaries and support. Let’s break these down a little further and look at the details.
One of the easiest ways to adjust your workflow is to take the smaller steps first. This provides distraction, regulation and a way to decompress from what you may see online. Here’s some of our top tips for positive habits during an investigation.
- Regular Breaks: This means you won’t spend too long dealing with sensitive content and provides an opportunity to clear your head. As an added bonus, you’ll also be able to focus better.
- Clear Boundaries: Setting Boundaries between “on” and “off” time can help by putting the brain in to work mode and clearly “switching off” when the job is complete.
- Diversify Tasks: Be sure to rotate through your workload, managing the stressful tasks equally with the mundane. While few people are a fan of tidying or report writing, taking these steps means you remain productive while decompressing from any stress earlier in the day.
- Healthy Workspace: Having a clear workspace where you’re able to perform your inquiries helps with the concept of maintaining boundaries. Hi stress work can be done in the “office” and gives an additional bonus in being able to clearly clock off afterward. Also, you’ll work far more efficiently if your workspace is set up to accommodate your needs.
- Healthy Diet: Investigators are like Developers and are easily bribed with coffee more often than not. However it’s important to not over do it. Don’t forget to sub in water across the day and ensure you start your work fed, recharged and rested. It’ll help you perform your job much more effectively
- Self Reflection: While many people take the time to ask them selves what part of OSINT interests them, many forget to ask the question of “How might this effect me”. Taking the time to recognize your own personal cues and triggers is an important part of managing your mental health effectively.
- Privacy Settings: Privacy and Media settings can often be very useful in managing your exposure to sensitive content. Keeping them switched on prevents harmful footage appearing immediately in your feed. Having to physically retrieve the content gives the brain time to prepare for what it might see.
- Sound & Visual: It’s often extremely useful to watch a video with no sound first. For many people sound is often just as memorable as sight. Viewing the video first gives you the opportunity to see what you are looking, and time to prepare for viewing it.
- Respect: Analysts will often be some of the first to view footage, uncovering facts and relevant information where needed. However it’s important to understand that we must have respect for the role we play. We may see footage of injured or deceased people, or analyse content at times of extreme social tension. Objectivity and respect is a key part of disseminating information without violating the boundaries of others or contributing to disinformation or hype.
- Sharing Content: We’d like to make one point crystal clear here. While awareness is a part of any crisis there is a distinct difference between providing a proper analysis and simply slapping an #OSINT hashtag on violent footage. Like our earlier point about respect, balancing the need for awareness against the negative aspect of spreading distressing footage should always be measured.
The Training
It’s important to not confuse habits with training. While we’ve nominated some useful habits for managing stress, it’s also important to discuss the management of stress and trauma prior to it occurring.
Typical research tends to show that those who perform this type of work and who have received supplementary training on managing their mental health tend to manage better than those left to their own devices.
Having Mental Health management strategies in place for releasing stress and dealing with the day will leave you better equipped to carry out your work. These can be simple, like providing mindfulness or rest strategies, through to complex, like journaling or talking with a friend.
Pick the one that works for you, but be sure to pick something. It doesn’t have to be complicated but having these measures in place prior to stress exposure can help build resilience into your habits.
The Boundaries
Having healthy boundaries around the type of work you intend to perform can be a great idea for long term security. We mentioned in the habits that identifying personal triggers can be useful and implementing boundaries around these triggers is usually a good practice. Playing to your strengths is ideal here. Work inside your comfort zone and make adjustments to navigate between productivity with healthy and not excessive stress exposure.
Some boundaries between your work life and personal life might also be helpful in managing stress. While technology means we can receive emails, news and social media posts anywhere, anytime this doesn’t always mean that we should take advantage of that all the time. Keeping social media or analysis out of your private rest spaces is a healthy attitude, and having time to switch off before bed helps the chances of keeping your sleep hygiene in check.
This connected world also requires consideration. For example. If we’re an OSINT analyst in the United States focusing on the current Russia Ukraine war then there’s typically going to be a big overlap between time zones and scheduling. While it may be prudent in the midst of the crisis to rise at 2am to receive local news and be one of the first to do an analysis, doing so continuously increases the chances of developing poor sleep hygiene.
Like we’ve said previously, the connected world will hit you with alerts 24/7 every day of the year if you let it. So don’t. Keep those boundaries in place.
Debriefing and Resources
The last part of navigating the mental health process comes from effectively carrying out debriefs and developing a support network to help you along the way. Like our prior tips, often the best way of doing this varies from person to person so understanding what works best for you is essential in understanding how to decompress.
While some people may opt for or need a mental health professional for this others may find support within their existing social network. Others may turn to other like minded folk or communities, as often, there’s a shared understanding that comes from reporting on a crisis or traumatic event.
Using existing mental health resources is also a great way of managing your own stress. There’s apps for providing relaxation or mindfulness as well as the ability to journal or track moods as well.
Lastly a good understanding of how the body regulates and tries to process stress will also assist in navigating traumatic footage or events. Understanding that often, the body goes through a natural process during certain emotional cycles will assist in recognizing stress. As a bonus, it’ll also help validate it as well. Which, can be an essential part of surviving in today’s modern world.
We’d recommend that even hobbyist level analysts take steps to manage their mental health. It keeps your humanity in check and allows you to perform your investigative role while minimizing the risk of stress of doing so.
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