Mental Illness and Vulnerability in Tech

Speaker: Schalk Venter

Track: Other

Type: Talk

Room: Righthand Room (Seminar Room 1)

Time: Oct 03 (Thu): 14:45

Duration: 0:45

In his seminal “Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression”, Andrew Solomon remarked that there is an entire world of silent “agonizing lives in invisible wheelchairs, dressed in invisible bodycasts".

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the tech sector is no exception. In the recent “Mental Health in Tech Survey" (https://osmihelp.org/research.html) only 30.7% of respondents indicated that they “feel comfortable discussing mental health with coworkers”. This seems unsurprising, given that when mental health was discussed only 33.6% of respondents “experienced or observed a supportive or well-handled response”.

As someone with a history of mental illness myself, I spent the last year conducting interviews with individuals struggling with mental health in the tech sector. In addition, I also interviewed legal and therapeutic practitioners to create a list of avenues of support you are legally entitled to as a South African citizen. In this talk, I hope to share some insights uncovered during this personal investigation.