Many developers, including myself, deal with mental health issues, yet mental health in the developer community is often overlooked, hidden, or swept under the rug. Too many of us suffer in silence and end up hurting our professional and personal relationships, or even worse, ourselves.

What can be done to help de-stigmatize mental health issues? How can we, as a community, band together to help those of us with mental health issues feel more welcome in tech? Together, we can work to Erase the Stigma associated with mental illness.

In this session, I will be telling my story of dealing with mental illness as a developer and how they affected my career, my productivity, and my professional connections. I will also be presenting statistics comparing the tech community to the general public in terms of incidence of mental illness, behavior, and how it affects the workplace. We will also talk about available resources for employees and employers, how to be a more supportive person or coworker, and what we can do as a community to Erase the Stigma and become Stronger Than Fear.

The only knowledge required prior to attending this session is to know that you want to learn more about mental illness in the tech community.

Attendees should leave knowing resources available for helping to deal with mental illness in the workplace and, hopefully, have a better understanding that a mental illness is not a character flaw, but part of a person.