Proposed: Mental health BoF

Matthew Harris admin at mattharris.org
Sat Jun 1 07:52:30 PDT 2013


I would like to talk about:

If mental health is a disease or is it actually a learned behavior.
Basic nature vs nurture discussion


On 06/01/2013 09:16 AM, Jonathan "Duke" Leto wrote:
> 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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>>
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