Such is the exposure to the details of a persons life in the 21st century, but I feel like that makes it even more important to publicly address mental health issues. Folks should not suffer alone, and should not be made to feel less capable or important because they struggle with mental health.
Yeah, kudos for setting it up... but at DjangoCon? I don't get it. DjangoCons never seemed focused in the first place...
This is the ultimate challenge with mental health - as you said, it has to be exceedingly convenient for someone in that situation to get help. Otherwise it's a perpetual feedback loop.
Does this not seem like oversimplification and rampant stereotyping?
I am a "young man" (well, below 30 anyway, though in SV I'm probably a bit long in the tooth), and it hurts to be constantly and systematically belittled in this manner. I have problems, and other people in the industry do too. Singling out one particular gender and age group and making them the bad party doesn't help anyone.
A great related article: (http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2014/06/on-depres...)
I'd even agree that in my own early 20s I was quite bad at appreciating the perspectives and life experiences of people from different backgrounds, but it's not the best way to gain the trust of people who might benefit from the service!
I suppose they mentioned it to suggest that you may not feel comfortable opening up to your colleagues and/or social group, especially if they are young men who are traditionally expected to put on a front of everything being fine and may not be open to emotional/personal discussions, which is a valid concern; but it's a shame it sounds like it's questioning the empathy of many of its readers.
Forgot to say: this is a really nice idea, I hope it works well.
Yes, it's also nice that they acknowledge that men sometimes have issues that they don't feel like they can tell other people about.
EDIT: Though strictly speaking there is a difference between "not being good at acknowledging your own problems" and "not being able to acknowledge your own problems because of societal factors". So I'm still not totally sure what they mean.
It will take less than an hour before some ass removes all the post-it notes. Sorry, but that system has too much fate in humans.
I though they were more of a problem with prioritizing things in your life.
Edit: I have suffered from both of these things myself, and I never considered myself to have mental health problems. In my case it was (still is) a case of taking a step back and re-prioritizing things. Apparently I shouldn't tell myself that?
Telling someone whose burnt out that they just need to reprioritise their life is like telling a depressed person to just cheer up. It's more complicated than that, and there are often deeper things that need to be untangled before someone can get better.
(I'll note that the DSM-V apparently does not contain burnout because it's problematically close to depressive disorders, and exhaustion is a symptom of a lot of things.)
If you can help yourself, that's awesome, but for a lot of people, a professional who has experience helping people in dealing with these problems might be able to help them too.
Consider that if you're already burned out - even if they "just" had to do with bad life prioritize - it's often not like you can just quit whatever you're doing and go on a retreat. You still have that 9-5 job, or whatever more heavy-weight responsibilities. Then it doesn't really matter what the original cause was - it's a mental health issue.
I am not saying its not a problem, but I am struggling to see it as a mental health issue.
The first hit I got on Google doesn't talk about exhaustion or burnout. It does mention depression, which I agree with.
http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/an-introduct...
