Rewriting The Pain Jehan's Journey Of Healing

The reporter opens up about his depression and recovery

- Cloe Willetts

It was during a busy work trip to Wellington that award-winning TV journalist Jehan Casinader paused to open a text from a colleague asking, “Have you heard about Greg Boyed?” Jehan clicked into a news site and the sick feeling in his stomach melted into shock. Filling the homepage was the familiar face of his fellow TVNZ workmate, who had sadly died suddenly.

“It was very confronting because I was going through such a dark time myself and no one at work really knew,” says Jehan, speaking to the Weekly from a bustling Wellington café. “I thought, ‘I need to work to fight these thoughts I’m experiencing.’”

Two years on, the former Sunday reporter has opened up about what was really behind his polished TV persona. In his raw and insightful book This is Not How it Ends, Jehan combines fascinating career highlights with solid facts about mental health and psychology, as well as a sensitive account of how he learned to unravel and reshape his own broken life story.

For Jehan – whose parents met at a refugee shelter and moved to New Zealand as immigrants in the late 1980s, later having him and younger brother Prashan, 25 – depression took a front seat in 2016.