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I am not depressed, but I think this talk is worth sharing: Devs and Depression by Greg Baugues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk

I recommend this talk about depression and software developers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk

There are newer versions of this talk, but I think this one has the most powerful storytelling.

I would for sure talk to your doctor about it. Normally your doctor can recommend medicine and services such as a psychologist(more talk therapy) or psychiatrist(more prescription based) that will work with them and be in your insurance network if that's a thing you need to worry about.

That said, I would do a lot of research before going in, but do see your doctor for sure. I say do research because depression can be a symptom of other things such as Bipolar type II or Cyclothymic disorder. Hypomania is the main hallmark that you would look into with those. I would also read and be prepared to talk to your doctor about anxiety symptoms as well as panic attack or ptsd symptoms. You may not have them but knowing the signs can help as depression can easily present with those, and you may need treatment for more than one thing to feel better.

Knowledge is power in this case. Jobs in IT and doctors are similar in some regards. Someone comes to us with a problem and we need to fix it. The more they know(symptom identification) and the better they can articulate why they think they may have some condition the easier it is to diagnose and fix a problem. Also both professions start with 'safe' treatments. We reboot the computer first, they try for pills or treatments with few to no side effects. We also go for the most obvious diagnoses first before getting into the esoteric,(the power is unplugged rather than the cable to supply power to the motherboard being bad) just like a doctor would go for depression rather than bipolar II for instance as that's the more common path.

I ran across this when I was suffering from some depression and was trying to see how other devs deal with it. It outlines some emotions and feelings about it, but also talks about bipolar type II and adhd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk

I hope this helps and feel free to reach out if you have questions. I'm still dealing with it myself so I get how hard it can be. It's not a failing of character or anything like that. It's a medical condition and should be monitored and treated as such by your doctor.

Hope you feel better soon!

I think it's worth looking into for sure. I ran across this when I was suffering from some depression and was trying to see how other devs deal with it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk

It's a talk about Bipolar Type II which doesn't have the same kind of full blown manic episodes as regular bipolar type I has. It has hypomanic episodes that are not often reported to the doctor because they seem like happiness or something good, or a sudden drive to do something productive.

I've been getting looked at for it myself now and normal depression meds(SSRIs) can actually negatively effect it.

It may be worth looking at OP!

⬐ throwaway909090

I'm watching this talk with tears in my eyes. I can't thank you enough. I'll talk to my psychiatrist about this. Thank so much.

⬐ samuraiseoul

I'm glad this helped you as well! If you want to, let me know how it goes! If not that's fine too! I hope things look up for you soon! :D

Sending positive vibes!

I don't suffer of depression myself, but I think this initiative is worth supporting.

This talk might be relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk

Checkout this site: http://devpressed.com/

And this excellent talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk

⬐ friendzis

Once again I have checked devpressed: HTTP 502. First thought was "oh, HN effect". But... This was not a story on the front page, rather a comment (although was at the top for some time), yet we managed to DDoS them. This raises an eyebrow or two for me: maybe the percentage of people suffering from any degree of these disorders may be way higher than we thought?

⬐ partycoder

Well, also the hits you get from a comment link should not be as many as hits listed on the front page.

⬐ gregorymichael

Devpressed owner here. This is on me. While investigating the emails that weren't going through, realized that Discourse was in need of an upgrade. Managed to bork my Discourse + Docker + Digital Ocean setup in that process. Hope to get this fixed today (if you have devops chops and would like to assist, hit me up.)

That said, based on talking about this stuff over the last few years, the percentage of people suffering from any degree of these disorders is certainly way higher than I ever thought.

⬐ taurath

Thanks for these!

⬐ deadtofu

I got really excited by this devpressed site.

I have Asperger's. Plus PTSD from various stuff that happened as a result of that.

So the idea of a safe place to share my strengths (and weaknesses) and try to find a job that doesn't stress me out was really exciteding. So I fired up Tor[2] and tried to register.

Then the confirmation email never name. I tried resending. Set a timer. Wait 15 minutes. Try not to perseverate.

I only have two emails - my main, plus a very old hotmail account which has now been morphed into an Outlook addy. Outlook has a pretty rich feature set, including aliases[1]. So I thought I'd try that.

"There's a temporary problem with the service. Please try again. If you continue to get this message, try again later".

I go through the process again on Outlook. Set a timer for 15 minutes. Try not to perseverate.

I guess I could use my personal email (my first name at my last name dot com), but frankly part of why I was excited about registering.

Maybe the issue is I did the initial account registration over Tor. Or maybe I'm just particuarly unlucky today.

All I know is my rational brain quietly whisper "Oh, just go back later, it's probably some server side bug", and my emotional brain yells back... other things.

I guess I could sign in with my Twitter, but if you'd been through what I've been through, you'd have trouble trusting people too. That's how I got into privacy and security work... feeling like I had a secret, and I needed to protect it.

[1] http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/add-alias-account [2] Yeah, a VPN is probably sufficient but lately I'm interested in how much of the web is closed off to Tor users due to crazy captchas and other gotchas.

⬐ slindz

I just tried to sign up with a standard email address without Tor and did not receive a confirmation email otherwise.

Best of luck to you.

⬐ partycoder

The same thing happened to me with the confirmation e-mail. It seems they have a problem with the registration.

⬐ deadtofu

Yeah, 2 weeks and no response. Well, it was worth a shot :/

⬐ hollander

>> In the event of a critical issue or urgent matter affecting this site, please contact us at [email protected]

http://devpressed.com/about

⬐ deadtofu

Thanks for pointing this out! I sent an email.

As someone who has, and still is struggling a lot with mental health issues, it’s immediately obvious how big the gap is between the impact of mental health, and the amount of attention it gets in the media/social circles. The social stigma of mental illnesses are so strong that you rarely hear sufferers of depression, anxiety, bipolar, etc speak out about it, which is exactly the opposite of what needs to happen.

Making it known that you have a mental illness is simply not the same as having a physical handicap (please note I am not trying to downplay the pains of physical handicap or any other illnesses). People simply do not know how to react to mental illness. Or they’re incapable of understanding. Many people would like to help their friends in these situations but without proper understanding, it’s arguably worse than being a bystander. Comments like “cheer up!”, “just get over it!”, “it’s not that bad” often are not that helpful at all. Even if their struggles seem reasonable to an outsider, the pain that the sufferer feels is very real, and to them, insurmountable. Never mind the fact that the social stigma often means speaking up about these issues means social or professional suicide, resulting in most of us not speaking out about it and feeling hopeless.

Posts about mental health show up on the HN frontpage every once in a while (or more frequently, in /ask), which is a step forward because there is simply not enough awareness on these issues that are so prevalent, especially among the HN demographics. But we still have a lot of work to do.

Side note: Greg Baugues started a community called devpressed[1] for developers struggling with mental illness a while back, and also gave a talk on the topic[2]

[1] http://devpressed.com/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk

⬐ lettergram

I had the pleasure of listening to a talk by Greg Baugues over a year ago.

It actually triggered the idea for my startup: http://synaptitude.me/

Essentially, the goal is to provide mental health help/treatment without the need to go to an office, thus reducing the barrier to get help.

Obviously, that's not exactly what you are talking about, but the end-goal, is to build a community around this form of treatment, and remove much of the stigma. The system/program/app we built also makes it really clear to people what issues are, and how to improve them. The clear way our website shows progress/issues helps remove a lot of the mystery and can help users express issues and show progress with loved ones.

We are also looking for people to enter our trial (which we are in the process of organizing): http://synaptitude.me/blog/now-accepting-trial-participants/

⬐ Joof

Any chance you are hiring?

⬐ DrScump

<We are also looking for people to enter our trial>

Given that a mere nudge of the mouse on this page pushes you to a "Subscribe" overlay before the reader even gets to read the whole page (with no stated opt-out), I think your response will be a tad muted. (Workaround: click elsewhere on the greyed-out part of the page)

I've watched the video by the author of this newsletter, and a lot of things did ring true for me. [1]

I moved to the Bay Area all the way from Russia, as a student, with the intention of diving deep into this startup and developer world. Eight months later, however, I still have no clue at all what I'm doing. Don't have enough projects for a portfolio, don't have enough proper skills for a resume.

Got overwhelmed with classes due to not paying enough attention in class, decided not to take any classes in summer - with the intention of working on some projects and maybe figuring my life out. Here we are what, three weeks later, and all I have is a static mockup page for the project and I haven't opened a code editor in a week.

I still don't know if I actually have a problem or if I'm just lazy, however. On bad days I feel like it'd be really great if I could just get some magic pill that would make everything great and solve all my problems. On better days I almost feel like I can defeat all of this and just go marching forward. On days like that I can spend twelve hours staring into code and produce something, but then days, weeks, months will go on with nothing at all.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk

Here's a great talk by Greg Baugues in which he discusses his own mental illness (bipolar type II and ADHD) and notes that often there is a fine line between a symptom of depression/mental illness and a trait of a successful developer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk

There is a discussion forum specifically for this: http://devpressed.com/ Please check it out, and also any of the talks [1] by its founder, Greg Baugues. It's from a ruby conference, but is applicable to all developers.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk)

⬐ olefoo

Seen this pattern at work.

⬐ jdmonty

http://blog.baugues.com/devs-and-depression

⬐ conectorx

thanx

You might want to watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk I've been struggling with this as well at times.

⬐ r4um

Very informative, thanks for sharing.

I am so sorry you're going through this. Remember, you can always procrastinate ending it all, and do it later while you examine other options.

There is a community at DevPressed[1] of developers who struggle with depression.

I am a developer and gave a talk on my struggle with depression and the greater issue of Developers and Depression [2]. Email me if you'd like to chat - greg at baugues.com

1. http://www.devpressed.com

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk