Proposed: Mental health BoF

Jack Lupton jacklupton at gmail.com
Sun Jun 2 14:54:45 PDT 2013


It seems like I've been around mental health issues all my life. I've seen
it with friends, family, and co-workers. The recent high profile suicides,
including murder/suicides bring to the forefront questions of when do we
intervene? how do we intervene? how do we recognize a dangerous situation?
Clearly these issues are not being handled well by the mental health
professionals and to a certain extent their hands are tied by legal issues.
So, we the community, the friends, the family have to be able to step in
somehow and help. Sometimes that means being a friend and helping through
difficult financial or emotional times, helping to think through faulty
assumptions or paranoia, and sometimes to absolutely insist on seeking
professional help.

So, that's how I saw the discussion developing, but these are tough issues
and may well be beyond the scope of an informal lunchtime talk about
difficult co-workers.


On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 1:02 PM, Chris Weyl <cweyl at alumni.drew.edu> wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 7:52 AM, Matthew Harris <admin at mattharris.org>wrote:
>
>> I would like to talk about:
>>
>> If mental health is a disease or is it actually a learned behavior.
>> Basic nature vs nurture discussion
>>
>
> I think that's a separate discussion, one I'm happy to let the AMA and the
> folks who put the DSM together handle :)
>
> I think what Rick and Duke are talking about is "how do we manage mental
> health issues when working in a field that depends ~100% on our brain?"[1]
> Given the stigma still surrounding mental health and how much of an impact
> it can have on work and life, I think it's an excellent BoF suggestion.
>
> For instance: How many of us get migraines and lose afternoons or entire
> days to them, and how many think a couple tylenol will "make it better"?
> How many of us are fighting with serious, clinical depression, have at one
> point, or know (and maybe lost) people with it?  How many of us have felt
> crippled with anxiety over work projects or life issues?  OCD?  ADHD?
> Bipolar?
>
> How do we create supportive workplaces that both allow us to support and
> maintain our mental health goals and those of others, while still getting
> the job done?  What do we need to do to make these things complimentary,
> not competing, ends?
>
> The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) is a powerful tool and covers
> some of these (e.g. migraines), but people cannot and will not get the
> support and help they need if they feel stigmatized.  That can only change
> when *we* change, and accept that not all personalities and brains work the
> same way, even our own... and that's OK.
>
>                                 -Chris
>
> [1] And wicked vim skills, of course.  Just saying.
>
> --
> Chris Weyl
> Ex astris scientia
>
>
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