Empathy as a Service: Supporting Mental Health in the Tech Workplace

1 in 5 Americans are living with a mental illness such as depression, bipolar, anxiety, or ADHD. As a community, the single most damaging thing we can do is perpetuate the stigma against mental disorders. This talk will begin with an overview of key statistics about mental wellness, followed by the efforts of the non-profit organization Open Sourcing Mental Illness to gather more data about mental health in the tech industry, the ALGEE action plan taught by the Mental Health First Aid training course, and finally conclude with ideas and strategies for making our tech workplaces more accommodating and inclusive.

About the Speaker:
Nara Kasbergen is a full-stack developer and mental health advocate in NPR’s Digital Media group, building and growing NPR One’s developer platform and NPR One for the Web, an Angular2 web-app. Having recently joined the conference speaking circuit, she gives presentations on PHP, APIs, Angular, and the importance of supporting mental wellness in tech communities, and has spoken at local and international conferences, including Self.conference, php[world], and EnterJS.

GitHub: /xiehan (https://github.com/xiehan)
Blog: https://medium.com/@xiehan