Looking after your wellbeing at DjangoCon Europe(2015.djangocon.eu) |
Looking after your wellbeing at DjangoCon Europe(2015.djangocon.eu) |
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...)
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...
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.
(If it helps to understand my perspective, M/29 history of anxiety, panic attacks and depression).
It's certainly not blaming them, or making a moral judgement. It's absolutely nothing to do with being "emotionally stunted". The gap is one of understanding, and it's a cultural one.
Since young men make up most of this industry, this tends to make the industry as a whole bad at understanding and dealing with these kinds of problems, which in turn makes it harder for the individuals in it to understand better.
I think the part about "not good at acknowledging their own problems, or understanding other people" could have possibly been phrased better (your "least likely to seek help" makes far more sense). However, given this broader background, I see that the intentions of this counseling are good.
Thanks a lot for making it happen!
EDIT: http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/mental-healt...
> All sorts of situations can cause stress. The most common involve work, money matters and relationships with partners, children or other family members. Stress may be caused either by major upheavals and life events such as divorce, unemployment, moving house and bereavement, or by a series of minor irritations such as feeling undervalued at work or dealing with difficult children. Sometimes there are no obvious causes.
> Stressful events that are outside the range of normal human experience, for example being abused or tortured, may lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
> Some stress can be positive. Research shows that a moderate level of stress makes us perform better. It also makes us more alert and can help us perform better in situations such as job interviews or public speaking. Stressful situations can also be exhilarating and some people actually thrive on the excitement that comes with dangerous sports or other high-risk activities.
> But stress is only healthy if it is short-lived. Excessive or prolonged stress can lead to illness and physical and emotional exhaustion. Taken to extremes, stress can be a killer.
And for most people that's going to be small interventions - having a coffee with a friend who is talking to you for example. The interventions taper up as the severity of the illness increases. Talking therapies; medication; hospital in-patient stays; rarely, if someone is at risk of death or of harming other people they can be hospitalised against their will; even more rarely there's ECT.
We know that early intervention is important. And modern mental health services should be talking about "resilience" which increases someones ability to cope with daily life.
And if you think about it, stressing your body makes it stronger. That's why working out builds muscles.
And of course, this only applies, if the stress doesn't take the form of your head being hit by a hammer.
Besides whether your mind is physical or not doesn't really matter all that much. What matters is that it's mutable. It can be changed, for better or worse and that change depends on the environment.
The work life balance issue itself can also just be a symptom of something else entirely.
It's a bit like calling addiction a willpower issue. Yes, the lack of willpower is the direct cause, but the underlying causes can be entirely unrelated (which is why recidivism is a common occurrence if you just dump the "healed" addict back in the same environment he came from).
Burnout is mostly used as a more socially acceptable synonym for some cases of depression, so it's difficult to talk about. Mental health issues are complicated enough as it is. Especially because even those suffering from them often fail to address them for what they are.
Did you even read my second paragraph? Even though it might be caused by a bad work/life balance, that doesn't mean that it isn't a mental issue when you eventually become burnt out.
It's like a depressed person who starts exercising and gets some relief from that - "Oh, then it seems that your problem was your physical fitness, not anything to do with depression". It seems a bit myopic.