The Bushra Abdel Samad Award is an award for the best journalistic work on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Bushra, one of the founders of Watara, suffered from PTSD as a result of the psychological pressures she experienced while covering wars and crises in her country. It is a disorder to which many journalists around the world are exposed, especially those who are in direct contact with people’s tragedies, crises and the horrific scenes caused by wars on human beings. It is a disorder that is often met with negligence and disregard for its symptoms, as well as remaining silent about it “due to the necessities of work”. However, the negligence is not limited to the person concerned, but also to the organization, which is often more concerned with the workflow than its impact and consequences. Bushra was keen to raise awareness on PTSD and organized accordingly, closed sessions for a number of field journalists for this purpose. With the establishment and launch of the Watara platform, she organized a series of interviews with journalists from the Arab world, as part of the Our Shades program, to talk about PTSD and its causes through the personal experiences of those journalists and colleagues with PTSD and its impact on their personal, family and even daily lives. For this purpose.
The annual Bushra Abdel Samad Award will be launched in the first month of every year to continue what Bushra tried to do in terms of lifting the lid on this silent suffering.