

“Brilliance,” “Pride” and “Genius”: How Tech Culture Hides Mental Illness - davidgerard
http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/brilliance-pride-and-genius-how-tech-culture-hides-mental-illness

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orionblastar
On June 2001 I had a stroke, ended up in a hospital, got diagnosed with
schizoaffective disorder. [http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-
conditions/schizoaffectiv...](http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-
conditions/schizoaffective-disorder/basics/definition/con-20029221)

A misunderstood mental illness that only 0.5% of the population has that is
like a cross between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

I was making Windows and Web Apps 80+ hours a day, under a lot of stress and
had just recently developed high blood pressure and my meds weren't right for
it yet.

I ended up on short-term disability, got paid $500/month instead of my salary.
9/11 happened and then anyone with a mental illness is never looked at the
same way again. I returned to work in November 2001 and once I had a panic
attack from the stress I was fired for being sick at work.

I kept looking for work, anything I did find didn't last long, as soon as they
discovered I was mentally ill, I got fired.

I ended up on disability in 2003, and been trying to get off of it since.
Trying to get a startup going, but lost all of my friends and my family
disowned me.

You cannot force IT people to work under a lot of stress and not expect them
to develop a mental illness because of it. I suppose that is why they hire
20sometimes, they can handle the stress, but once they get mentally ill from
it, fire them and hire someone to work cheaper to replace them. How many
suicides in the industry before you figure out you need to treat people with
dignity and respect and not stress them out so much?

I get accused of having autism or asperger syndrome because of the way I talk
and write. I am 'high functioning' as opposed to those who are 'low
functioning' and not as smart. Before World War II they would take high
functioning mentally ill people and treat them to develop their talents to be
used in complex stuff like code breaking, etc. But after world war II they
only treat the low functioning mentally ill and the same thing doesn't work
for high functioning mentally ill.

My p-doc claims I speak a certain Filipino (It is Tagalog but I didn't want to
correct him) language that only other high functioning people can understand,
and that this is common in the tech industry to speak that language that the
average person cannot understand.

------
lutusp
This cuts both ways. A psychologist might say, "People with no knowledge of
psychology often relabel mental illness as genius." A critic of psychology
might say, "Psychologists with no knowledge of natural human society often
relabel genius as mental illness."

Asperger Syndrome, which famously and regularly did relabel genius as mental
illness, has been thrown out of the new edition of the official diagnostic
guide, but with little effect on its diagnosis rate (I still hear from parents
whose children have been given this diagnosis, more than a year after it was
officially abandoned).

My theory about psychology is that if you're gainfully, productively employed
doing something that fewer than 1% of people can do, _it might not be mental
illness, it might be a positive evolutionary adaptation_. But that's just my
opinion (and that of the chair of the NIMH, and his predecessor).

Depression can have many causes. I can think of a really deplorable but easily
avoidable one -- being told by people in pseudo-authority that your natural
gifts actually stand as proof that you're mentally broken.

