When Sofie Isenberg applied for a prestigious Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellowship in April 2020, she had big plans. The pandemic was still in its earliest days and she pitched the idea of driving across the country to report on the mental health impacts of COVID-19. By the time she was named just one of 40 fellows two weeks later, the United States was largely locked down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI very quickly decided that was not something I felt ethically able to do,\u201d says Isenberg (\u201922) of her original on-the-ground angle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stuck at home with a reporting fellowship, but nothing to report on, she\u2014like so many other people\u2014fell into \u201ca big empty hole,\u201d experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety as life tumbled out of her control. At one point, Isenberg started wondering how others were coping, particularly people of faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The seed of a new story took root. Isenberg\u2019s curiosity prompted her to reach out to faith organizations and researchers. When a Muslim advocacy group pointed her toward a global study showing Muslims were holding up better than most others, the seed sprouted. Over the next few months, she spoke with people of different faiths (or none)\u2014Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans\u2014as well as scholars, sociologists, mental health experts and neuroscientists. \u201cIt just blew up into this giant project,\u201d says Isenberg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In March 2022, the Sunday Long Read<\/em><\/a> published Isenberg\u2019s article, titled \u201cSpirit Matters<\/a>.\u201d The 5,200-word article explored why, \u201con average, religious and spiritual people tend to experience better mental health, even in the midst of a pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite their different backgrounds and traditions, Isenberg says many of the people she spoke with shared common traits that helped them stay spiritually healthy throughout the pandemic. Their religious practices gave a routine and rhythm to their days, while their faith gave them a strong sense of what they could control in their lives\u2014and what they couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before focusing on journalism at COM, Isenberg studied religion and literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and anthropology and cognition at the London School of Economics, later working for the UN\u2019s Food and Agriculture Organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was aware of the fact that being really active in your community and giving is good for your health and your mental health,\u201d says Isenberg, who switched to journalism to tell stories that could shape the conversation on topics she cared about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the Pulitzer fellowship would typically bring funding for international travel, seminars in Washington, D.C., and training opportunities, Isenberg says the Zoom-era replacements\u2014online conferences to share projects, expert lectures filled with industry advice\u2014were still insightful. And the story itself has had a big personal impact, helping drag her out of that empty hole. She hopes her work helps broaden the discussion around mental health, moving it beyond medical and talk therapy interventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stuck at home with a reporting fellowship, but nothing to report on, she\u2014like so many other people\u2014fell into \u201ca big empty hole,\u201d experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety as life tumbled out of her control. At one point, Isenberg started wondering how others were coping, particularly people of faith.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cI went on a journey of discovery and found all this really interesting research and spoke to all these wonderful people,\u201d she says. Her findings also showed how \u201cto think more deeply about our relationship to our sense of control and the world, how we can modify that, train ourselves to think a little differently.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With her graduate studies at a close, Isenberg is now working as an associate producer on a new PRX podcast, How God Works<\/em>. She\u2019s also collaborating with animator Gemma Green-Hope on a documentary\u2014supported by a Ffilm Cymru Wales and BBC Wales preproduction grant\u2014about premenstrual dysphoric disorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in people,\u201d says Isenberg, \u201cwhy they do the things they do, how to make life better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Sofie Isenberg applied for a prestigious Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellowship in April 2020, she had big plans. The pandemic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19704,"featured_media":32985,"template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1401,1669],"bu-publication":[1472],"discipline-type":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/32916"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19704"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/32916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33096,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/32916\/revisions\/33096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32916"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=32916"},{"taxonomy":"discipline-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/discipline-type?post=32916"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=32916"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=32916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}