Geeks seek to hack depression

David M Williams
Monday, 15 December 2008 18:40

Business IT - Networking

It's easy to tell an extroverted IT professional: they're staring at YOUR shoes. Jokes aside, the stereotypical computing worker may be hiding a dark secret. Yet, they're not alone, according to a new online support group for the tech crowd.

The stereotypical IT professional squints day and night into a screen just in front of them, is addicted to the new mail sound of their BlackBerry or iPhone, focuses hard on writing program code to the exclusion of everything around them.

There’s another thing the stereotypical geek may be hiding, and that’s a crushing depressive illness. If that's you, prepare to delete any notions that you have to face it alone.

bluehackers.org launched this week after a brainstorm at the recent Open Source Developers’ Conference (OSDC) held in Sydney at the beginning of December.

A quick show of hands during a closing lightning talk on who had dealt with, or was dealing with, depression revealed that sufferers were far from isolated cases.

The site bluehackers.org was thus born with a goal of helping geeks know that there are fellow geeks just like them, whether blighted with depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder.

While traditional support groups for depression and related afflictions exist, bluehackers.org specifically seeks to focus on the unique work environment and challenges that face tech workers, with insights, tips and posts from comrades in the industry who have experienced similar plights.

A key part of the bluehackers.org concept is a logo - a blue-coloured variant of the so-called Hacker Emblem first proposed by Eric S Raymond in 2003. This emblem is itself based on Conway’s Game of Life.

It is hoped this logo will fly at conferences and meetings around the world, ensuring like-minded people can find each other, and support, in a kind and unobtrusive manner.

The creation of this group may be something the industry desperately needs if various claims can be believed that computing professionals can have a predisposition to depression or that computer programmers display characteristics akin to Asperger’s Syndrome (eg here, here and here!)

Irrespective of whether computing causes depression, or people who tend towards depression also tend towards computing, and leaving behind all academic arguments, if you are an IT practitioner in the grip of what Winston Churchill dubbed “the black dog” bluehackers.org is here to show you that you need not go through it alone, and to bring you into contact with people just like yourself who can relate and who can share about their own battles and most importantly, who can provide you with encouragement and support to bring about healing.