Mental health disorders affect millions of people around the world, and have a big impact both on employees and the companies they work for. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of stigma around the topic, and many people are not comfortable opening up about it.
This session focuses on my journey of self-discovery, including my struggles with depression and anxiety (more about it in this article). It hopes to provide some insight into what these disorders can do to you, some of the things to look for, and techniques that can be used to cope with them. There will also be examples of what some companies are doing to better support their employees, which hopefully inspire others to follow.
As a metaphor, this is also about my career journey from working mostly with proprietary software (being closed off, with heavy focus on making money) to Drupal/Open Software (being open, focusing on the community, and sharing knowledge).
This is my first time presenting at a Drupal event, and second time attending (first one was DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019). Coming from big software conferences, it was great to see a conference where people wanted to spend time together, whether they worked on the same company or not. And where the focus was learning and sharing, instead of just selling. :-)
In the end, the main goal is to show the audience that it is (or should be) ok to "Be Human" at work, and that the results of opening up can be surprisingly positive.