Kicking of Geek Mental Help Week 2016

We started Geek Mental Help Week in 2014 and every year since I’ve been touched by how willing people are too share their mental health experiences.

I’m kicking off Geek Mental Help Week 2016 today with an article about Don Draper’s (and mine) depersonalisation disorder:

“I defy anyone to defend Don’s behaviour to the fullest extent, but I will argue with anyone who says that Don’s behaviour makes him a bad person. I’m certain that Don makes bad choices, but I have a theory that his choices aren’t driven by callousness or selfishness but are, in part at least, because Don suffers from a mental illness. My theory is that, like me, Don suffers from ’depersonalisation disorder,’ caused by the trauma he suffered earlier in life and that affected his behaviour and shaped him as the person that we know.”

Also today, Si Jobling’s written about ’Beating Imposter Syndrome,’ Neil Studd shares his internal battles. Max Manders talks about discovering that he has a Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Sam Small writes about what technology can do to help our mental health. You can read them all and more on the Geek Mental Help website.

We’ll be publishing links to new articles, events and podcasts every day this week so come back to the website and follow @geekmentalhelp on Twitter.

Get involved

It’s not too late to get involved in Geek Mental Help Week:

Contribute a new article or blog entry. We’d love to read your experiences with anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, depression, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, personality disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD.) Here’s how you can contribute to Geek Mental Help Week.

Help us too spread the word about mental health issues by following @geekmentalhelp on Twitter and sharing links to the website and articles on Twitter using the #geekmentalhelp hashtag.

Geek Mental Help means a lot to me and I’m looking forward to this year’s week more than ever.