The host also explains why some players from 15 years ago would not make the cut today.
It was an intense episode of Survivor 46 this week as two players were eliminated after the tribe was split into teams for the immunity challenge, and each side had to vote someone out.
But the drama began the night before, and not just because Venus Vafa was falsely accusing Soda Thompson of voting for her at Tribal Council. After the tribe went to sleep, Ben Katzman woke up “in panic mode.” Katzman, who has suffered from panic attacks in the past, experienced what he described as 50 seconds of hysteria. Luckily, tribe mate Kenzie Petty — whose mother and sister also suffer from anxiety — was there to help calm Ben down until the panic subsided.
But there was more help available had Ben not immediately rebounded, host and showrunner Jeff Probst explained on the latest episode of the On Fire with Jeff Probst podcast. When cohost Jay Wolff brought up the incident and asked if Probst was made aware of what had happened during filming, the host responded, “Yes, I do hear and I did hear. And the first question is always: How severe? In this case, how severe of a panic attack?”
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Jeff Probst on'Survivor 46'Probst is well aware of the seeming incongruity of being so concerned with player safety while designing a game based on putting people through brutally taxing conditions. “It might seem counterintuitive that we as producers admit that we build a game that is designed to break you down to a point that requires you to dip into your physical and emotional reserves to see what you're made of,” he says on the podcast. “Then how can our number one priority be the physical and mental health safety of our players? But it is. It's number one.”
That is why producers lean so heavily on the Survivor medical team — the same team that already pulled one player, Randen Montalvo, from the game as a safety precaution due to a pinched nerve. And it seems the show’s mental health doctors were contacted after Ben’s episode.
“We not only have medical doctors on location, we also have our mental health specialists on location, our psychology team,” says Probst. “So, in this case, we let our psychologists know what happened, and if there was even a slight concern that Ben was in real trouble, we would intervene in whatever way was most appropriate."
Robert Voets/CBS
Ben Katzman of 'Survivor 46'Probst continues: "I'm very proud of our aftercare program for both medical and mental health issues. I don't know of any show in our genre who does what we do. We follow through, and that support continues for as long as a player needs it. And watching it within the episode, I'm obviously moved and very satisfied that Ben's community — in this case, Kenzie, specifically — took care of their own. It's a very big shift in the game from, say, 15 years ago where this might not have happened.”