Proposed: Mental health BoF

[Rick Scott]

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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