Proposed: Mental health BoF

Jonathan "Duke" Leto jonathan at leto.net
Sat Jun 1 07:16:52 PDT 2013


Howdy,

Thanks for bringing this up, Scott.

Just this morning I was pondering if I should give a lightning talk
about this very topic.

The Portland tech community lost one of our cornerstone members to
depression and suicide recently [0]. It is important for everybody to
know that depression is a disease and it can be fatal.

If anybody would like to talk about these things at the conf, either
in private or with others, please grab me in the hallway.

Duke

[0] http://koshevoy.net



On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 12:56 AM, Rick Scott <rick at shadowspar.dyndns.org> wrote:
> This is something the open source & software dev communities
> are thankfully starting to talk about.  We need to talk about it more.
>
> You don't have to look very hard to make a sizeable list of
> accomplished people in the F/OSS community whom we've lost to
> suicide.  Less apparent is the ongoing harm when someone's struggling
> to deal with an unrecognized or untreated mental health issue
> on their own.  In addition to the obvious suffering, it's pretty
> hard to do your best work when you're trying to cope with a brain
> that hates you.  This is a huge loss for them, their employer, and the
> community as a whole.
>
> Something like 1 in 5 people will deal with a diagnosable mental
> illness in their lifetime.  Despite this, there's still a lot
> of stigma around disclosing mental health problems and seeking
> treatment for them.  This stigma is killing us.  The longer people
> wait to talk to somebody or seek help, the worse things can get.
>
>
> So, I'd like to put together an informal BoF for anyone who's
> interested in mental health in the tech community.
> No crazy required to attend -- folks who are interested in
> talking about the issue at the overview level are welcome
> along with anybody who wants to share their own experiences.
>
> Scheduling is pretty open -- we could pick a restaurant for the
> Monday night Dinner BoF, grab a table at Tuesday's banquet,
> or do something else entirely.  If you're interested, you're
> welcome to email me privately (rick at shadowspar.dyndns.org),
> or to sign up on the BoF wiki page.
>
> http://www.yapcna.org/yn2013/wiki?node=Mental%20Health%20BOF
>
>
>
> Cheers,
> Rick
>
> PS: Speaking of people who are talking about these issues, props to
> Greg Baugues (@greggyb) and Ed Finkler (@funkatron) for trying to
> get the conversation going:
>
> http://blog.baugues.com/devs-and-depression
> http://confreaks.com/videos/2341-mwrc2013-devs-and-depression
>
> http://funkatron.com/posts/open-sourcing-mental-illness.html
> http://funkatron.com/posts/open-sourcing-mental-illness-at-php_tek13.html
> --
> key B2480CA6 / print D0E7 6EBB A448 B31D 691E  3F44 71D8 8993 B248 0CA6
> By all means insist that all pitons be driven in at the mountain's peak
> only.  You won't get very far up the mountain that way, though.
>     :Gavia libraria
>
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-- 
Jonathan "Duke" Leto <jonathan at leto.net>
Leto Labs LLC http://letolabs.com
209.691.DUKE http://duke.leto.net
@dukeleto


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