Psychological Wellbeing for Content Moderators
Safe practices for analysts, researchers, and journalists
Mental Wellness for Content Moderators
FD Consultants offer best practice for psychological wellbeing services to protect staff against the challenging space of the online landscape by providing high-quality trauma specialist care. We support organisation staff working as content moderators, intelligence analysts, journalists and online researchers exposed to traumatic material – we Protect the Protectors and Care for the Carers.
Cumulative Effect of Vicarious Trauma
Horrific imagery and reading disturbing material from acts of violence and war zones to sexual trafficking and exploitation to crime scenes, and terrorist activity impacts our mental health and can lead to vicarious trauma. Viewing graphic content and continual exposure can bring about secondary traumatic stress for content moderators, intelligence analysts, journalists and online researchers, as the cumulative effect of this trauma exposure detrimentally impacts overall mental health and well-being.
Duty of Care
Even the best-prepared and seemingly resilient moderators often find they cannot be prepared enough for the images they see and words they read. That’s why we help organisations develop best practices and duty of care policies beyond signposting to psychological services. A proactive approach to mental well-being supports staff more successfully, and the process of protecting content moderators starts at the beginning, whether that’s a change in working practices to support the level of trauma exposure to embedding trauma management programmes.
What We Offer
Yearly Psychological Screening
For high-risk staff exposed to traumatic materials. Psychometric questionnaires, monitoring staff mental well-being, and signposting to specialist support are required to explore the impact of the work, offer psycho-education services and how content moderations can take care of themselves while keeping an eye on any related symptoms and make recommendations to the organisation.
Monthly Supervision Groups
Regular check-in sessions for small groups. This additional support is highly recommended for individuals identified in high-risk roles due to the intensity of their work and the impact of exposure to trauma.
Specialist Trauma Counselling
Our trauma therapists are trained in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (TF-CBT) and Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing and Processing (EMDR), which are recommended trauma approaches by WHO, APA and NICE guidelines. These approaches get much quicker results than general talking therapies.
Psychological Debriefs
To debrief after a particular intensive piece of work. This can be offered to individuals or teams.
Reviews
Review Organizations Policies, Procedures and Guidelines for staff care: evidence of clear, structured and well-being policies with a dedicated team to implement them and how to support staff whose role exposes them to traumatic material.
Training
We offer various wellbeing training. We recommend our ‘Stress Management & Resilience Building’ half day workshop for anyone joining the sector. We then recommend our ‘Trauma Awareness’ half day workshop for anyone identified in a high-risk role.
