Open Sourcing Mental Illness

Changing how we talk about mental health in the tech community

[osmihelp]

Stronger Than Fear - Now in EU

Our founder and supreme leader, Ed Finkler, has done a fantastic job spreading the word of OSMI around the US. Thanks to your donations Ed's going to be able to make 2017 (and beyond) even better than 2016, and him going full time working for OSMI is beyond our wildest dreams.

THANK YOU.

With that said, the very challenges that have made Ed such a knowledgeable and compelling speaker; the mental illnesses that have put Ed onto this unbelievable path to helping others also mean that it's tough for Ed to travel outside of the US. Ed's anxiety actually rules international travel out of the equation at the moment, and we've had to turn down a lot of requests for Ed to present at events in Europe (and beyond) because of that.

To try and help spread the message further than the shores of the US, we've decided that Gary Hockin, one of our board members and an experienced international speaker in his own right will be available to deliver the Stronger Than Fear talk in Europe.

Let's be honest, it's not going to be exactly the same as Ed's version, but the message will be the same, and Gary has put his own unique spin on things to make the talk as unique and valuable as the original.

If you'd like Gary to deliver Stronger Than Fear at your event, the get in touch at [email protected] (or tweet @osmihelp), and we'll do our best to make it happen.

[osmihelp]

Mental Health in the Workplace and Your Company’s Bottom Line

Given that most of us spend a good amount of our time at work, it should come as no surprise that the work environment plays a significant role in our ps...

It should come as no surprise that OSMI takes a particularly strong interest in mental health in the workplace, particularly since tech workplaces tend to be especially stressful and can exacerbate mental health issues. That's why we enjoyed this article in the Huffington Post, which focuses primarily on positive strategies and the benefits that they can bring to a company based on the American Psychological Association (APA)'s 2016 Work and Wellbeing survey, as well as the winners of the annual Psychologically Healthy Workplace Awards and the things they have done to promote mental wellness. Consider:

In a survey of employees at Prudential, this year’s Organizational Excellence winner, 82 percent reported that employee recognition was a top priority of the organization. “Given identity is tied to work, being recognized and appreciated makes employees feel valued and boosts sense of self and self-esteem, which is protective in terms of depression and anxiety,” says Psychiatrist and author of The Power of Different, Dr. Gail Saltz. “Since close to half of all employees will at some time in their lives struggle with mental health issues, it behooves companies, for productivity and saved dollars for disability, to encourage early mental health care.” Saltz points to the fact that depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide.

Read the full article to learn more.

[osmihelp]

OSMI founder Ed Finkler was the featured guest on the ZenFounder podcast episode #111

Ed was interviewed about his founding of Open Sourcing Mental Illness by Sherry Walling, Ph.D. of the ZenFounder podcast for their most recent episode, #111. Check out this half-hour episode on their website or in iTunes.

[osmihelp]

World Health Day: Unmasking Male Depression

Why depression in men may be under-diagnosed and under-recognized.

We've been busy working on a number of projects (to be revealed soon!) so we've been fairly quiet lately, which is why we missed the opportunity to participate in last Friday's World Health Day, officially sponsored by the World Health Organization, which focused on raising awareness about depression. Despite our tardiness, we really wanted to share a great article about depression in men from Psychology Today. Consider:

…research suggests that men are much less likely to acknowledge and report possible symptoms of depression. Likewise, men often judge that symptoms of depression are less severe in comparison to women.

This led Yale Professor Susan Nolen-Hoeksema to declare that women ‘amplify’ and men ‘blunt’ possible symptoms of depression. In other words, men are much more likely to downplay their suffering, both to themselves as well as others.

This means that doctors, as well as epidemiologists, may easily fail to detect the presence of depression in men. This can result in inaccurately low prevalence rates, as well as numerous ‘false negatives’, where men with actual depression are misdiagnosed as mentally healthy.

Read the full article and let us know your thoughts.

[osmihelp]

OSMI volunteer Christina Keelan is speaking at Mental Health America's annual conference

We're big fans of Mental Health America and all the great work that they do to promote mental wellness, so we're very pleased to have OSMI member Christina Keelan participating in their annual conference, which takes place June 14-16. Early bird registration is available until April 30th, so register today if you're interested in attending. Let us know if you'll be there; Christina would love to chat all things OSMI!

[osmihelp]

Designing a product with mental health issues in mind

How we're designing Monzo to be a powerful and unique financial service for our most vulnerable customers.

How do you feel about the idea of a bank that's trying to design their products and services to cater better to those living with mental illness? Newly-licensed UK bank Monzo writes:

One in four adults with a mental health problem are also in problem debt. As you would expect, the more unpaid bills you have, the greater stress impact it has on your life, and greater stress results in a worsening mental state. This is a perpetual, fast cycle, but one that I believe Monzo has a duty to recognise and fix as best we can.

To learn more about how Monzo is trying to develop their products with mental health in mind, read the full post on their company blog.

[osmihelp]

OSMI founder Ed Finkler will be speaking at the PHP Unicorn Online Conference

The inaugural PHP Unicorn Conference will be taking place in the cloud on May 4, 2017. Ed will be giving his talk "Stronger Than Fear: Mental Health in the Developer Community", and this is a great chance to hear him speak if you've never been able to make it out to any of the conferences he attends. Today is the LAST day to buy early bird tickets at the super low price of $50; starting tomorrow, ticket prices will go up to $100 each. Register now.

[osmihelp]

OSMI is at Amegala's Indy.Code() event today and tomorrow

We've got a booth set up in the expo hall (check out our brand new tablecloth!), and OSMI founder Ed Finkler will be there to talk all things OSMI on Thursday & Friday. If you're at Indy.Code(), come grab a sticker and learn more about the awareness campaign and resources OSMI has been working on to promote mental wellness in the tech community.

[depressionarmy]

Daily reminder: You’re not a bad person if you need to take a mental health break

[osmihelp]

Not that it's any more true today than any other day, but it feels like several of us need this reminder right now.

[osmihelp]

Two OSMI board members are speaking at Lone Star PHP (#lsp17) next month

Founder Ed Finkler is giving the Day 1 keynote How We Changed The World With Open Source (Friday @ 4pm)

Board member Joe Ferguson is teaching a half-day workshop titled All the Laravel Things - Local to Production to Making $$ (Thursday @ 1pm) and a regular session Put an end to regression with Codeception Testing (Friday @ 11am)

Many of the other speakers are longtime supporters as well. If you're attending Lone Star PHP, be sure to look for our booth, where we'll be available to talk all things OSMI.

[osmihelp]

Controlled By Exercise: The Distance Between Self-Harm and Self-Care

“Strong is the new skinny.” “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” “Suck it up now and you won’t have to suck it in later.” Sound familiar?

On this #SelfCareSunday, we thought about writing about the self-care benefits of exercise, but then we found this thought-provoking blog post by Angie Viets exploring how too much exercise, or exercise for the wrong reasons, can easily become an act of self-harm instead of self-care. She writes:

Our bodies crave movement. Exercise has tremendous benefits for our mental and physical well-being, but when abused it does far more harm. It’s not intended to be our only method of coping with the stress we experience in our lives.

Read the full article and let us know if you yourself have found any good strategies for working exercise into your self-care routine without going overboard.

[osmihelp]

Father Of 2 Sons With Schizophrenia Talks Of His Struggle To Save Them

"There is no greater ... feeling of helplessness than to watch two beloved sons deteriorate before [your] eyes," says Ron Powers. His new book is No One Cares About Crazy People.

When it comes to mental health in tech, we talk a lot about mental illnesses like depression and anxiety, but rarely about schizophrenia. That's why we were immediately drawn to this interview with Ron Powers, author of the book No One Cares About Crazy People, on Fresh Air with Terry Gross earlier this week. The father of two sons with schizophrenia, Powers gives great insight into why mental healthcare for schizophrenics is often subpar or lacking entirely:

The advent of the so-called "wonder drugs" like Thorazine ... were touted as cures for schizophrenia — they weren't. At best they were cures for symptoms. But on the strength of Thorazine and its great consumer success and promise, President Kennedy, seeking to do the right thing, signed legislation ... in 1963 ... that authorized the emptying out of mental asylums and the transferring of their patients, their inmates, hopefully into community care centers that were going to be built around the country to receive them.

Deinstitutionalization was a catastrophic social experiment, one of the worst we've ever had. It ended up creating the [mentally ill] homeless population that still plagues us today.

To hear the full interview, check it out on NPR.org or in NPR One.

[osmihelp]

Facing the world when depressed is an overwhelming challenge, but the encouragement of close friends and furry companions makes the journey much more tolerable.

Mental illness is a fairly common theme in video games, but it's rarely depicted realistically or tactfully. Consider:

While videogames about mental issues abound, it is still a subject that many titles are tackling with mixed results. Insanity becomes a superficial reason to justify villainy; for instance, the antagonist of Far Cry 3, Vaas Montenegro, is only motivated by his inexplicable need to inflict pain. And in many horror games, sanity meters are used to depict how quickly its characters will spiral into psychosis. Not only are these often inaccurate, but they also perpetuate harmful stereotypes about people with mental health.

Indie game dev company Pirate Software is trying to combat those harmful stereotypes with their game Heartbound, which chronicles a young boy's struggles with depression. Read more about Heartbound in this great article and check out their Kickstarter campaign, which ends in about 50 hours.

[osmihelp]

OSMI volunteer Allison Tarr will be speaking about mental health in tech at WordCamp Halifax

Allison's talk, titled "Field Guide to Caring for a Developer", will examine the state of mental health awareness within tech and discuss strategies and resources to improve it on both a personal and community level. WordCamp Halifax takes place on May 27th, and tickets will go on sale any day now and are likely to sell out; follow their Twitter account to stay informed about when registration opens. Be sure to give us a shout if you plan to attend.

[osmihelp]

Ketamine For Severe Depression: 'How Do You Not Offer This Drug to People?'

More and more doctors are offering ketamine, an anesthetic and club drug, to severely depressed patients who haven't responded to other treatments.

Prescribing ketamine for depression might sound like a wild idea, but consider the following:

"There's warranted caution that's balanced with an optimism that says we've never had a new medication for depression since the era of Prozac," Murrough says.

Considering Prozac was discovered in 1972 and entered medical use in 1986, that's a pretty long time to go without major advancements in pharmaceutical technology to treat depression. To learn more about this medical discovery, including one major caveat that has scientists thinking ketamine itself is not a viable long-term solution, read the full article.

[osmihelp]

OSMI volunteer Nara Kasbergen will be speaking about mental health in tech at Self.conference

Since accidentally becoming a mental health speaker in the fall of 2016, Nara has been working on a new, more fleshed-out talk about mental health in tech titled "Empathy As A Service: Supporting Mental Health in the Tech Workplace". She'll be debuting this talk at Self.conference 2017 in Detroit, MI on May 19-20. If you're planning to attend Self.conference, let us know! Nara would love to meet up with you and talk all things OSMI.

[osmihelp]

Data and Mental Health: The OSMI Survey 2016

As someone who is very invested in all things data, I thought that I could lend my skills to studying the mental health landscape in the United States and beyond. I have decided that I will write a series of posts on some data analysis projects I am doing on mental health. I start this series today with an analysis on a dataset produced by Open Sourcing Mental Illness (OSMI).

We've already had some great results posted in response to our Data Society challenge on data.world, and we particularly love this deep-dive by Michael Rosenberg, which he documented thoroughly in this post on Medium. Check it out!