 You've got 20 minutes to give this talk once had the same number of slides about it was not a good idea to be honest It's a very bad idea All right, I don't want to wait anymore, so yeah, let's get started so So yeah, this is a stronger than fear mental health and developer community If you are going for some other talk that you want to be in and it's not this talk, please leave So this is the first time I've been to a Drupal conference of any kind whatsoever Which is I guess a cool thing so you might be wondering like who is this person that you're talking to or is talking to you? You're not talking. I'm talking I've been a web dev for about 20 years. I Have done a bunch of different stuff mostly PHP and JavaScript some Python some DevOps some a lot of design work When I was younger before my skills were exceeded by the requirements of the internet Etc. Etc. Etc. I've been a team lead. I've been a lone wolf. I've been a CTO I've done a lot of different stuff, and I'm a dad. I'm a husband local community participant I've served on school boards. I've done all sorts of crazy stuff like that School board was probably the hardest job I've ever had Actually kind of sucked. I have been known as a webmaster who here has been called a webmaster at some time in their life All right, you're all very old very very old I worked at a university so they continue to call me webmaster up until 2010 which It's crazy Some irony in my use of that language. Sorry about that So I've been doing something called open sourcing mental illness since 2012 And what is that basically? I've been talking openly about mental health stuff and the mental illnesses I deal with and How this affects me and how it affects us in the tech industry since 2012 I'm also I'm the founder and I'm the chairman of the board of open sourcing mental illness a non-profit 501c3 organization that was formed in 2016 to serve around these efforts now. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a psychologist I am not a mental health professional. I am certified a mental health first aid is a one-day course that I took but I'm not a pro I probably am about as you know, like how you know, just because I use toilet doesn't mean I'm a plumber. I Am not qualified to diagnose you in any way But I'm here to talk about what it's like to have a mental illness from my perspective to talk about that But then also to talk about how mental health affects our community and our industry and what the kind of what are some things that we can do about that so This is the uncomfortable audience participation section I changed the colors in my slide so I want to make sure it looks okay like it's seeable. So I have a Couple different questions. I think the microphone doesn't move with me So I can't dance around like I'm used to on the stage so I'm curious how many of you wear glasses or have some sort of ocular Crutch that you use to see a little bit better Most of us here looks like we do and that is something that happens because human beings Maybe weren't supposed to live this long and eventually their bodies give out and their eyes give out sooner than the rest of the stuff So we have to wear glasses to sort of get by in society to do things like drive or Get around and not get hit by cars when we're crossing the street and the things of that nature So that is a pretty typical a very common But in some sense disability that we have That was so ever and many people have to do this We have to wear glasses openly or we wear contacts. Somebody's afraid to talk about it How many of you are afraid to talk about that you wear glasses or contacts don't like to talk about it makes you uncomfortable Maybe somebody will think I'm weird. Does anybody do that? All right. Well good Has anyone ever asked you to try harder instead of wearing glasses? Anybody all right, I go as a guy they're trying without glasses. I was not suggesting that sir Don't make me Okay, so We're fine with this glasses that you know everybody lots of people do it like 75% 80% I'm sure it's something like that Okay, so another condition. That's pretty common is diabetes and I my three people in my family and I have eight siblings So big family at least three off top my head have developed type 2 diabetes Maybe more. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about So I'm kind of screwed genetically in that respect, but I'm curious how many here Would feel let's say in your workplace Imagine the people that you work with or that kind of thing or if you're a student, you know people you see regularly in your Those kind of social groups Would you feel okay talking about diabetes if it's a subject came up? I'd like you to raise your hand if you'd be okay with that like it wouldn't make you deeply uncomfortable Raise your hand if you if you're kind of cool with that. Okay. All right now for some people's not that's okay There's nothing wrong with that But we speak pretty openly about diabetes we speak pretty openly about how to get treatment what you should do to try To prevent it and things like that in our society and it is something that if it's not treated it kills people they die sooner or they They suffer for a long time if they don't get treatment for it and this is a typical thing If we don't don't sort of work on that that's a problem. So we speak pretty openly about Speak pretty openly about it now another condition or a group of conditions would be cancer and and and I lost my brother to cancer I'm sure many of us have either lost loved ones family friends or deal have to have experience that ourselves have fought cancer It's really common. It's really disturbingly common and It's touched most of our lives, but we also have entire months dedicated to kinds of cancer things of that nature You know professional sports sort of do awareness things about it. I'm curious. I'm gonna ask that same question You know you're in that workplace environment that you were thinking about before How many of you would be okay if the topic of cancer comes up? You'd feel okay comfortable. Yeah, maybe not excited Not like hey, so how's your weekend cancer? You might not do that, but you know it wouldn't be like the worst thing possible now for some people it brings up really bad stuff hard things I Mean I certainly has hard associations for me thinking about my brother And that's hard. That's really hard But we also speak pretty openly about that we speak pretty openly about it hasn't always been that way four years ago 50 years ago We didn't do that about cancer as a consequence Lots of people didn't get treatment didn't get care That kind of thing Now I've talked about a number of what the things that we consider just primarily physical issues You know things like you have to wear glasses or you have diabetes or have cancer. What about mental illness? this category of different conditions That are described in books and we have diagnoses for and they're categorized and things like that How many of you would feel okay talking about mental illness in that same workplace group? How many? So a lot less like I think safely less than half of the group in here not many people do Not many people do and I think that's pretty interesting and I think that's interesting Particularly the lightest some of the stuff that I'm going to show with show and share with you To keep that in mind keep that in mind when we think about these sort of major health issues and And and our openness about it and how that affects our ability to treat people But back to me my most interesting topic I have two things I have generalized anxiety disorder that's the first diagnosis I have so if you go through this whole medical system They got to give you a diagnosis so that you can get treatment so you have that it does so there's like all these criteria There's certain criteria you have to get so I have two diagnoses officially I think I've generalized anxiety disorder and I've ADHD so generalized anxiety disorder for me It kind of works like this. I basically have fight-or-flight reactions when it's not appropriate So it doesn't mean that like I'm having reactions that are ab that are unnatural Necessarily these are things that Happen to everybody for the most part, but they happen in Usually existential threat kind of situations your brain is designed to detect threats and protect itself Okay, that's why you have an anxiety response to things. You have a stress response. You have you go into a state You know heart rate goes up your body get pumped full you get starts generating chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol and Fills your body with that stuff because it allows you to do things that you wouldn't do normally if you were just super mellow and being super mellow It's pretty cool most of the time and we all love to be super mellow But we don't want to be super mellow if like a lion's about to eat us That's not the time to be super mellow I'm gonna have to roundhouse kick this lion or I'm gonna have to run super fast and really neither of those things are gonna happen but If I'm in that existential situation, you can imagine this is a terrifying state I might die that is terrifying that is it and that is an appropriate time an appropriate time To have that kind of response. I should be afraid. I should be scared my heart rate should go up I should get to have adrenaline. I should have cortisol in my body I should that all those things should happen so that I can run faster and I am I Can react faster and do all of those things. It is not appropriate to have that kind of reaction when You're standing outside a bar that you've never been in and you know your friends are waiting inside for you But you've never been in there So you don't really know the rules and you don't really know the layout You don't really know the other people that are in there and you're just kind of trusting that your friends are in there And that really really freaks you out And you get really scared You have that kind of reaction in a situation where it's not appropriate You're not doing it on purpose. This is not particularly fun for me to do There's nothing enjoyable about it, right? You know, it doesn't make my life better. It makes my life much harder But it does I have those reactions for You know various reasons. That's the complex thing of the psychology and the physiology of it or complex But the fact is that I have those reactions in appropriate times It's not appropriate to have those things because I'm afraid to use the bus because I don't understand how buses work from a monetary and payment standpoint I don't get it. Am I supposed to bring a 20? Do I tip the driver? I don't know these things and you think you know Yeah, it's kind of goofy. It doesn't it doesn't add up if you think about it It doesn't add up. You're like, well, what's actually going to happen like what is what but the problem is that they You know, some people find that they develop They view as threats things that aren't actually say existential threats, but are things like embarrassment And I particularly one of the things I have problems with is that I get really embarrassed if I don't understand etiquette or rules of a situation and I get very uncomfortable My brain starts telling me something's wrong and something bad is going to happen And I can't necessarily put my finger on it But it's it feels that way It feels that way so for Gad however you want to call generalize anxiety, so that's kind of what it's like for me No ADHD and you know, I described these things as separate conditions They're all just the way my brain works and there are one thing it just happens to be that they fit into these two different categories That are parts of the medical system so that how we get treatment in this country So ADHD or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I was diagnosed with it at 27 I absolutely have had it my whole life It is didn't like magically develop when I was an adult It I had it my whole life all through school all through You know elementary school through college. I had it and I somehow got through it But without any treatment or without any understanding of coping skills or anything like that But what goes along with ADHD for me and there's there's there's some variety There's a there's sort of like a couple different categorizations. They put sort of subcategories of ADHD But the things that there's some things that you commonly expect You think of people having trouble focusing and sort of jumping from one task to another things like that and not being able To stick on one thing doing lots of little things right and that is and never sort of like focusing on the task They actually have to do the thing that is would be appropriate for them to complete at that time They are avoidance of that avoidance is a big thing that people with ADHD do So I have a lot of trouble focusing an avoidance of less appealing tasks Like when it when it's been untreated. It is a lot more exciting for me. This tells you okay I'm gonna date around when I started getting you know treatment for it. It was a lot more appealing to read stories on slash dot Then to Like do my work All right, so I and I also ended up gravitating to jobs that were sort of lower pressure Because I could kind of get away with that It was easier for me and I you know I find what found myself going in those places but I would like I would go a week or something like that was basically accomplishing nothing because I Just it was like every day I just couldn't freaking focus and it was just I would just do I would just read little the internet is fabulous in terms of Like rewarding you for reading little bits of information and giving you dopamine your brain Rewarding you with dopamine every time you read a little some stupid bit of information. It's awesome at that, right? That's like what you know Wikipedia like going down a rabbit hole Wikipedia rabbit hole Well, it's all like your brain just if your brain likes to get a little piece of information like that It just the internet is like a perfect reward system that accomplishes nothing But there's a couple things that go along with it that I think sometimes people don't realize that are pretty common with ADHD I Have a really low frustration threshold So that means that I can and going along with that my emotions tend to come on quick and they come on really intensely Particularly negative emotions, but sometimes start on positive ones, too. So I Get upset or excited faster than most people I particularly find myself that like things that will any kind of annoy some people will really upset me and This is a constant struggle that I have all the relationships in my life things like that That's something I have to watch because it'll be like why are you getting so upset about this and I I don't know It's just what my brain is doing. My brain is like this an alarm starts going off and it starts screaming at me The emotions are so intense that sometimes I feel really out of control And I have to go and sort of segregate myself off into another room to just be away from people because I'm afraid of what I'm Going to do because I'm afraid of like saying terrible things or saying mean things to people because I feel my emotions are so out of Control they put me in a place where I feel like I want to Yell or say mean things or stuff like that and that's a really common unfortunately common thing for me There's people looking at the room they come on in it's awesome in here super exciting What's the deal with the echidna thing? Is this a company? Do you play hockey? I'll allow it. Okay? One interesting thing is there's a lot of what they call comorbidity That sounds horrible. It sounds like you're gonna get killed to death twice It just means you have two things that's all it means If you have a cold and a sore throat you have comorbidity So It is really common that people with it are pretty common like at least last I saw a number 35 40 percent of people 30 HD Also have an anxiety disorder. This is not surprising because there's a lot of things about these things that seem to go hand-in-hand It's really just about the way a person's brain works and it happens to be it falls into these two different sort of categorizations But I'm really really good at constructing bad outcomes because I'm good at creating things in my head that I'm emotional about or have Emotional attachment to a strong emotional connection to and then really hyper focusing on them You know that hyper focus stuff or stuff that I'm emotionally involved with is like the only thing I can do That's part of it. That's what ADHD is like and sometimes it's positive It's like I'm really excited about doing something and then sometimes when it's something I'm F***ing terrified about That's the only thing I can think about and I am awesome at coming up with the worst possible Situation and then assuming that that will be true and living my life as if that is an inevitable outcome Even though it's probably pretty unlikely and then when things happen that seem to that in any way might Confirm my suspicions. It's very hard for me to slip away from that and say no That's just life. Sometimes bad stuff happens And it does not mean that everybody's out to get you or that every there's going to be a disaster at any given point in your life Or that you know anytime somebody doesn't return their email you return your email quickly or respond on text message It doesn't mean that they hate you, right? But sometimes I think that so I take meds every day. I have to take pills. I take kind of a lot of pills I don't really like taking a lot of pills, but it's what I got to do or otherwise things are going to be a lot worse That's just kind of the way it is. I have these chronic conditions And I have not successfully been able to figure out say psychological aspects or other kinds of things that are causing it So I also take medication, but I see a therapist too about every two weeks more recently because my life has been a little bit Of a shit show it's been more like every one week and I talk about though I talk with her about how and why I do the things I do what's going on in my life things like that But really again how and why I do the things that I do and we come up with strategies to try to address them so for For different people talking therapy not as opposed to drug therapy talking therapy can be a lot of different things for different people but the end of the day for me I view my therapist more as a Life coach who actually knows what she's talking about who is trained Somebody's laughing. Yeah, there you go It's kind of like a mentor who actually knows what's going on with stuff I keep saying that I meant that not in a negative way We have you know traditions of mentorship like and I believe you do in the Drupal community and other program communities and stuff like that Somebody who has experience with this has training in this that has you know understands these kinds of things works with people to help them Do a better job of X and what she does is to help me figure out my behaviors How to break them down and how to modify them so that I don't keep doing those same behaviors that I find I'm you know hurtful or destructive or unpleasant to myself and to others So it impacts my work every single day every single day. I am dealing with these things every day There's not a day that goes by that I do not have I am not conscious of the fact that this is where you my brain works and Sometimes it absolutely like gives me superpowers It gives me an ability to do certain particularly certain aspects of my job I am good at because the way my brain works. I'm absolutely and I'm better at it than some people because of that There have been things that I've found That I'm able to make connections kind of faster than some people do I'm really good at free association and what that means oftentimes is that I'm good at like You know most web applications now have complex stacks from like dev like from like dev ops and things like this all like and then Firewalls and junk like that load balancer stuff all the way up to like the user interface and the design work and stuff like that and I Have an ability to kind of see like Okay, if we do this on the like in this system down here like down at the bottom where you can't actually see my hand Let's see it like this. Hey, there we go. Here's the dev ops down here And here's the exciting design and UI work down here that I probably wrote and react for some reason because it I need to Write something that compiles into some other language for the sake of I'm just mad and I'm old And so But I'm pretty good at this like okay If we make this decision down here that means we're gonna have to change something up here like the way that people interact with stuff That's going to affect like how how we have to handle input how if they output. I'm good at anticipating a lot of security issues Most web application security issues are simple stuff It's all about like the stuff that's coming in and could you send something that you don't want? Are you sure you know what's coming into the system? And are you sure you're not going to accidentally spit out something? that's dangerous That's most security issues and web applications and so I'm I just After a while I sort of figured out that I didn't understand why other people didn't see certain things that when I did and I just turns out that I'm good at that Because the way my brain works. I'm good at I don't know exactly why just the way I am I also and maybe this has to do with a lot of different things, but I think a lot about Human behavior, and I think a lot about user behavior and you know most of the work that we do It has it's for somebody else. It's not just for us You know we don't build we build some things probably just for us right but most of the things that we do particularly things that We get paid to do we're probably building to help somebody else do something and So it is helpful to be able to empathize with the way that people interact with things and I find that both Interesting and I also find that that ability to make those kind of quick connections with oh this is but you know I remember when I saw this person kind of interact with this system this way it did this so That maybe gives me some insight about what we should do You know because the way that we're constructing this maybe doesn't actually work for the user and I found that I Think about that more than a lot of people It doesn't mean there's not other people that are way better at it than I am but I do pretty good at it those are a couple things that do pretty good at and I do it because the way my brain works it absolutely is because of my brain works and then sometimes The way my brain works absolutely ruins me Sometimes it just craters my day completely and it renders me unproductive particularly with it like if my emotions come on strong I can't work. I cannot work. I have to stop there are many days I mean like on a regular basis where I end up crying and And and and it that's You know culturally we don't like that culturally we don't like that kind of expression of emotion We tend to view it as sort of a sign of weakness and stuff like that So we're embarrassed by it but But that's common for me and it's just it's a way that my emotions are getting out like I usually feel better after I do that I'm not a deck of short why there's some you know some people think that there's like well It gets quarters all out of your system the strip. I don't know that kind of sounds like the yes to me Like it comes out through your tears. I don't know if that really adds up No, but some people say because there's that you'll actually see higher concentrations of those things in your tears They think that somehow it's leaving the body because of that that may be the case. I don't know It doesn't seem like the most effective System, but there's some people who think so anyway I don't know because I'm not a doctor and I'm just kind of making this up as I go But at the end of the day the hardest thing about all this stuff is how alone I've felt for most of my life And I felt alone because I felt like I was the only person who dealt like I felt like I Had an experience unlike anyone else's that I knew I felt like Everybody else seemed like they were able to finish their homework And they were able to finish their there all their college work and go through classes and take like five or six classes In a semester and they were able to balance all that stuff and they were able to you know Keeps focused at work and they were able to not have problems with you know with like say man, I got to read all these slash dot comments and It's like they are okay with that and they all it's still to this day Like most people can read hacker news and not get infuriated. I Do I get super pissed off when I read that stuff? I'm so I Physically and I'm comfortable so that I won't read things like hacker news and Reddit because It just makes me so mad and most of the content is just what's the big deal? but there are just some people who are kind of a little douchey on it and sometimes that's kind of tolerated on there and And that infuriates me to such an extent that I cannot I just can't even handle it right? But in all of those ways that I felt different I felt utterly alone among crowds of thousands of people like at conferences and things like this and I felt incapable of living the life that I'm in I Feel like I always screw it up And I always fail and everyone I love is going to grow tired of me and leave because they're just going to get sick of my crap But the thing is there's actually a lot of people who feel that way a lot of people who for one reason or another They're whether the kinds of conditions that they have or things like that. They feel the same way There's a lot of people who deal with this and that's what we're really kind of trying to fight here That's what we're working on So if we talk about the worldwide community, so I'm talking about everybody us human beings right Talk about the worldwide community take it up to this sort of macro level So the World Health Organization did a study called the global burden of disease a finished collecting data in 2004 and actually released the report in 2008 is the last report they've done like that I don't know if they maybe do it once a decade or something like that Anyway, you can go look it up. There's big PDF that has tons of stuff about about all kinds of diseases and all kinds of locations All over the place So it's this global burden of disease that tries to examine the impact of different diseases on populations all over the world And what they found was that the burden of mental disorders is the largest of all disorder categories in North America It's greater than cardiovascular disease and it's greater than cancer So the burden the impact that it has on the population If we're talking about disease categories, we're talking about cancers. We're talking about cardiovascular diseases We're talking about, you know, metabolics stuff. We're talking about all sorts of different things, I think Mental disorders put the largest burden on the population This is a quote from it in all regions neuro psychiatric conditions are the most important causes of disability Accounting for around one third of years lost to disability among adults age 15 years and older and over So it everywhere in the world if you add that all up neuro psychiatric conditions mental disorders Are the most important causes of disability account for a third of Years lost to disability one third just from that category of conditions One third of years lost to disability is mental health issues So if we look at then let's look at the tech community That's the community I come out of been doing this 20 years. It's like pretty much what I know, right? I'm a Frickin nerd Far as we could find there's basically no research There's very very little research done in the tech community amongst developer types things like that There's little things here and there a lot of it's anecdotal There have been a couple small studies done in a couple places, but there's basically no research So we tried to start doing it and we have a thing called the mental health and tech survey And we do that every year and in 2016 these are the results that we got back now This information here is for just people in the US and It's non self-employed people because how the US is different than many other countries that show up highly in the survey Most of them it's the US and then European countries in Australia Those are the biggest ones and then you see a smattering of like of Asian countries and things like that So that's what we have in our survey. Remember this survey is self-selective, which means that people choose to participate in this survey They're not forced to so it's not like we have a control group And we then we have this group that we give a thing and see what happens like we this is Self-selective so there's something called a self-selection bias that we have to keep in mind with any kind of can any kind of Conclusions we draw from this, but I think there are some things we can get out of it that are pretty useful So again, this was as of 1116. There have been it maybe there's a dozen You know things have been submitted since then this is pretty much the larger category and this is about 800 900 respondents So the first question that I want to talk to you about we're going to talk about four different questions The first question is do you think that discussing a health issue with your employer? Would have negative consequences and we asked that about physical and we asked that about mental conditions So if we talk about physical 72% of people said no only 4% of people said yes only 4% About a physical condition talking to their employer about it if we asked about mental health It goes up to 23% for yes That is five times more that think there would definitely be negative consequences if they discussed this issue with their with their with their employer five times many Another question would you bring up a health issue with a potential employer in an interview if we asked about physical? Not many people are going to come bring up stuff because they don't want to do anything that might potentially endanger them Even though it is under ADA law if they employ more than 15 people It is illegal to discriminate against somebody based on that as long as you can give them What they call reasonable accommodations which is legalese for something But it's vague but in reggae and reasonable accommodations and then it's left up to the judges to figure that out Okay, so physical conditions 24% said yes 36% said no 40% said maybe probably depends on the condition right So then if we ask about mental health conditions Yes goes down to 7% and know About doubles to 68% far far fewer people say yes twice as many people say no Does your employer provide resources to learn about mental health issues and how to seek help? Remember how prevalent mental health issues are remember the impact that they have on society and the burden that they put on a society and Then keep in mind that in the US The workplace is the primary conduit for health care Most people get their ability to access health care Through their workplace and the workplace is responsible for and expects to in many cases handle Health care questions or at least point people to resources So does your employer provide resources to learn more about mental health issues and how to seek help? Only 30% of people said yes only 30% Rest is no or I don't know which don't know is probably means is effectively a no It might mean that they're trying but they're not doing a very good job of talking about it and making sure that people understand And then there's a final question that I want to share with you Do you feel that being identified as a person with a mental health issue would hurt your career? I want you do you mind if you raise your hands if you think that would hurt your career Most people most people in here think that well In this case 87% of people said yes or maybe Only 12% said no, I don't think it would only 2% of people can say no it has not And that's not like I asked 10 people 800 people responded to this. That's a lot. Oh, and there's one more And I want you to remember that this is self-selective So there's a self-selection bias to it, but I want you to also keep in mind that the general population Generally runs most of the numbers you'll see is that about 20% of people at a given time in say North America or the US Is dealing with a mental health condition or they might say it's like within a given year 20% of the population deals with a diagnosable mental health disorder. Okay, so 20% Which is pretty high that is one in five people and if you think about the people, you know the people you work with That's a lot of them I bet they don't talk about it Have you been diagnosed with a mental health condition was a question we asked general population estimate again is about 20% This is self-reported The report we got from that was 50% Now okay, so is it 50% probably now I don't think so Is it maybe 30% is it higher than the general population? I think there's some probably That's an assumption on my part But that's a very high number and that indicates perhaps that there are Larger issues or more concerning issues within this group of individuals than there is just in the general population And the fact of the matter is ignore all that other stuff ignore all this stuff This is that sick workers don't work. They just don't it doesn't matter. What's wrong with them If they have a cold they don't work as well, or they don't work at all If they're depressed, they don't work as well, or they don't work at all The same outcome happens for an organization. They don't get the productivity that they hope for So if we're talking about what's the upside for organizations why try to do better in the workplace? Why try to be supportive of mental health issues? It's because it benefits the organization and everybody else in it and everyone in it Everyone inside the organization that organization benefits from this from the top down Because if you have mental wellness you have better employees Employees feel valued and they feel secure and they work more effectively When employers demonstrate a commitment to their well-being And I think that makes sense to most people if you think about the jobs that I think about the jobs that I have liked That I really felt good about it wasn't about what I was doing It was about the people who I worked with and how I felt that they the respect that I felt like they had for me Did they have my best interests at heart or was I just a resource to them? So I'm gonna work harder for somebody who doesn't treat me that way who I feel like does have my best interests at heart and Feels like they demonstrate and demonstrates a commitment to my well-being if they do that I'm going to be more loyal to them. I'm going to work harder for them Because I feel better about doing that work no matter what it is and People want to work for companies that respect them fully That doesn't ignore their well-being that doesn't push them too hard that doesn't let them go when they get stressed out That doesn't not know what to do and kind of abandons them people want to work for companies that don't do that and An intro a good quote I thought I had a discussion with my friend Greg Bogus and he said when we talk about ten times 10x developers, you know, I've heard this ridiculous term which I'm maybe there's a 10x developer Somewhere in the world. We talk about 10x developers like it's a fairytale But you take a developer with crippling depression and you get them the right treatment and they will literally be ten times more productive So you want 10x developers? Try getting treatment to the people who actually work for you now Also, it's a lot cheaper But the problem is is that change is hard and it's hard because we're scared and we don't know what to do and that's Challenging for us. We might be afraid of endangering the workplace We have we're spot, you know people particularly people who are in leadership positions have a responsibility to lots of people For the well-being and livelihoods of lots of people and that is a part of that job So that can be scary that you might be doing if you do the wrong thing You might endanger the workplace the existence of the workplace, maybe And you might be afraid you probably are afraid of losing your job if you feel like you reveal or you get treatment or somebody finds out or these kinds of things and At OSMI we can help but there's three things. I want to suggest that you could do right now Or maybe when you get it done with this and stuff, you know, don't just like leave and go do it Please stay for the rest The first thing that you could do is you get our OSMI handbooks and we have handbooks for employers and employees And they focus on there's two one is one is for how there's two that are focused on ADA law the Americans with a disability act and how to apply that to mental health in a tech workplace and There's one there's one does focus on employers knowing your rights and and your responsibilities And then there's one for employees or you know your rights and responsibilities And then we have a third handbook about how to create supportive workplaces to promote mental wellness We have these things available. They're creative commons license. You can go get them right now as ebooks on lean pub If you don't have to pay anything if you don't want to we like it when you give us money because it makes our We can actually do this work But if you go in there you go get the handbooks you read the handbooks you do the work You're going to be much better informed about these kinds of issues and what you can do about them The second is to speak openly about mental health and that does not mean that you overshare the way that I do necessarily My my therapist says I have a confessional personality and I believe that is quite accurate But talking about the topic openly is hugely significant Everybody here has a great amount of influence on the social groups and communities that you You the circles that you walk in that you belong to you have more influence than you think you do That's always been my experience is you say you have more influence than anything You have to use that positively And this is a way you can do that by talking about this topic Openly by not being afraid to discuss the topic to the extent that you feel comfortable that you can I Think it's important to do so because they I have been constantly surprised at how it seems to free other people from the burden of fear That they have wrapped up around this stuff And the third thing and this is a this is a tiny thing and this is kind of a some metaphysical But it's like but I think this is deeply important You have to tell people that they matter you need to tell them that they impact their life positively How strong and how great they are and that you really maybe you'd really admire them Everybody needs to hear this We all do There are very few of us who go through life as a loner who can self-motivate completely But particularly people's whose brains lie to them need other people to help them Remember these things because they can't see it themselves Because their brains actively tell them things that aren't true My brain does all the time So I want to bring this back around down to sort of like its essence and talk of you know We've talked about a few different different communities and things like that At the end of the day communities that we have like this Drupal community We have here this really cool impressive Drupal community that I'm seeing here and all the different developer communities of php community WordPress community Just developers in general JavaScript all these different Communities that touch each other and work with each other and interact Communities are about people. They're not about code Code is sort of like the McGuffin it it's this thing that sort of brings us together But it could be anything it could be beer. It could be this that whatever, you know It could be you like brewers or it could be cigars or it could be Fashion or it could be movies or things like that But what matters about a community is the people the story of a community is told in its people not in in in this Thing that brings the people together What matters in a community is its people and this is about our community and that made to you that may mean XYZ it can mean a lot of things but all of the things that we participate in they are our Communities and we take ownership of all of that stuff whether we choose to or not whether we think about it that way or not We are members of those communities and We're talking about our colleagues our friends and our people and Sometimes they suffer in silence. I Know I have I still to this day suffer and don't tell people and I am in bad shape And I don't talk about it and I hide it I've done that since I've been 12 years old most of my life I've done that and Sometimes we lose people Sometimes we lose people and we're left to wonder why and regret and try to understand And there's always going to be some people that we can save and there's going to be some people we can't But the only reason this happened is because of fear The only reason we allow so many people to suffer in silence is fear and the only reason we don't save more of our Kin and our kith is fear. That's it That's the only thing so we have to choose You and I and all of us we choose We can choose to give in to fear. We can choose to hide It's easy to hide and not say anything. It's easy to be silent It's easy to be quiet and be okay with the status quo. It is easy to do that It is really easy to do that And I'll tell you something having a mental illness. This is not something for the week This is not something that makes you weaker This is the heart amazingly hard and the people who have to deal with these things have a great burden And they have great strength to continue through life with it But the choices we make about these kinds of things if we're going to make change in these kind in the cultures The communities that we live in this is not for those people who are weak or indifferent or content to be comfortable It is hard to stand up to this Just the way it's hard to stand up to bullying just the way it's hard to stand up for Any kind of behavior that that in a community Sometimes we tolerate because we think it's too hard to say something about it But I think we can do better I think that we can meet inaction with action and I think we can meet confusion with Understanding and I think we can meet indifference with compassion If we choose to be stronger than fear Thank you very much Thank you. Thank you, but wait, there's more I haven't told anybody this yet, but I think I'm going to make a great leap and Do something that I've been thinking about and wishing I could for a long time and What I'm going to try to do is to do You know, I started this thing open-sourcing mental illness five years ago. I said that's just a talk that I did at PHP tech it was an unconference talk and It was really significant. I got to do that and that was about well I was four and a half years ago about so and a lot of things gradually have come along and One of the things that I've tried I've learned is to take a few more chances. I'm kind of risk-averse That's the thing that's been tough for me It's easy to do things when you know, they're going to be successful It's easy to do things when you know, they're not going to be hard and you know, you're confident that you can do it But I'm going to take a leap and I haven't put this on the slide because I wasn't sure what I was going to say exactly But I'm going to try to it right now. I work. I have a day job. I That's what I do. I have a my family has a comfortable. We have a very comfortable income We do very well. We live in Indiana. It is super cheap And so we do very well because I work remotely and so I make a better salary than I would at a local gig and All this is getting around to it that I've decided that I'm going to do open-sourcing mental illness as my full-time job and Well, thank you. Thank you. That's I'm I'm scared. I'm really really scared and I'm probably going to have to do consulting gigs and stuff like that to supplement But and it's scary because I know I'm gonna have to like figure out how to get a certain amount of money to just like not completely implode our life, but I Think we can do this and I think that it's something I have found this to be the single most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life and So I'm taking a leap and I'm gonna do that and I hope that you'll help me because I really need it. I need your help particularly identifying Organizations who might be interested in helping with this financially that is particularly useful to us But every time you buy a t-shirt or a hoodie or you donate something like that any kind of amount of money That makes a big difference that allows me to keep doing this to come speak at these conferences to you know to do the work and right now we have Way way way more work than time and I think it's time then That I decide to do this full-time. So that's who I am I hope that you'll take a chance to look at our website osmi help or g if you look at the donate section We have fundraiser going on right now It would mean a lot to me if you took a look at it and you thought about it and thought if you if you could either Give a little bit. That's awesome But if you just talk to other people about it, too And if there's places that you think can do something to help us out to help us all out That would be a lot because right now It's going to be the case in a couple weeks that I'm not working for another company. I'm working for you guys I'm working for you people. I'm working for you folks I'm working for you because I want to make this better because I want to change this culture I want to change this community. I want to change this industry and I want to save people's lives and have them not have to suffer like this So I hope you'll help me out doing that. Thanks very much. We do have time for a few questions I think if you want to there's about 10 minutes left in the session time And if you do want to ask a question you have to go to the microphone and ask if you want to talk to me afterwards That's fine. I will be around for a little bit. Although I have to meet my sister For dinner at 6 30. So if you have a question, just go up to the mic. If not, that's fine I will wait here for a minute You may do so or not. No pressure Okay Okay Okay, well, thanks very much. Thanks for coming. I will see you guys soon if you want Oh, there's flyers and stickers up here. The flyer is the same. It's two-sided. I'm sorry But you can take more than one feel free I've got flyers and I got stickers if you want to take flyers or take stickers to give them to other people that would be super awesome and So more people can kind of find out what we're doing. So that would be great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it Oh Indianapolis. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah, we're about an hour away Oh business card, yes, I do have business card If you want a business card What's that To help the people in this community be happier and healthier problem Awesome. Thank you so much for saying that We only have we only have e-books right now We've been working on maybe getting printed books. I'm not sure what the if there's gonna be a lot of them So we just have to kind of see Like to do it on one also you might have to get a set printed unless you're gonna charge a lot of money for a printed book And so and then maybe Right, I know some people do it so it's just very I've gone all I Did the fact that's problem I much easier free to read screens now But why why doesn't it back? Anyway, yeah Did you have a question I think there are things that are uniquely American problems that relate to that I would probably say though that it seems to be the case At least for numbers and I've seen this in the common thing in European-based I think there are certain things that are unique to American culture that may contribute into certain kinds of issues But I would not say mental health of general and particularly Yes, I do Probably