Journalism can talk about hard subjects like pain

On the 29th, I close a cycle in the role of radio-news anchor. At the invitation of the creator of “Saúde e bem estar” (Health and Well-Being) on Rádio Cidade 670 AM in Curitiba, João Arruda, I clocked in on the air, Monday to Friday, from 10 a.m. to noon.

The experience on AM radio is beautiful, because listeners take part with audio messages sent by phone, when they do not come on live. I liked receiving them with a simple “hello, who is speaking?”

We brought to the studio, in partnership with the Paraná Regional Psychology Council, professionals to talk about grief and depression. But if the idea of the program is to be light, how not to bore the audience with themes that seem to cut the pulp of fingers like paper? Our answer is: go straight to the point, as life usually does.

When the conversation was about losses — which are various, and at different depths of damage —, Dayane Bubalo was in the studio. Dayane Bubalo, disability-rights activist:

I went blind in 40 minutes.

A week earlier, ophthalmologist Luiz Eduardo de Aguiar Marques of Hospital IPO had expressed his concern about the silence of diabetic retinopathy, the disease that blinded Dayane.

Misael lost a son

While psychologist Mari Mansur spoke about the stages of grief, listener “Misael” called (in quotation marks because of uncertainty about the spelling). Misael, Rádio Cidade listener.

A year ago, I lost a son. I have never talked about this subject in public, on social networks, nothing, but I wanted to tell you. I also lost two friends to Covid-19. Wear masks.

With courage for the simple

In the program on depression, I asked psychologist Flávio Voight Komonski quite plainly: “after all, what happens when we go to therapy, what is it like?”

He answered in such a friendly way that we received a voice message thanking him for the words, “because therapy is not only for those who are crazy, no!” Of course we put it on the air.

And we did not stop there. There was time to discuss what approaches in psychotherapy are.