Such stories are extremely varied. You're now arguing that people in general, not programmers specifically, commonly face mental health problems. The question here is what additional risks you run when you become a programmer. If there are only few or none, then including a section on mental health in a book about learning to program is really straying from the subject of the book.
> You're now arguing that people in general, not programmers specifically, commonly face mental health problems.
No, I mean to imply that programmers, contrary to people in general may be at a higher risk to develop mental issues, mostly related to work pressure, personality related issues that tend to surface earlier or more serious with people that are regularly under stress and people that deal with abstractions that they can not easily talk about with others leading to isolation, and isolation is the exact wrong thing to do for people dealing with pressure and stress on a daily basis.
But if you're not talking about your work anymore (or even about why it matters to you) then alarm bells won't ring until it is much too late.
Now I could go and dig up the HN references I was alluding to earlier but I think the memories of some of those would tear open wounds that are best left to heal. Anecdotally, for the size of the community the number of people that have come forward here out of their own accord and that have testified to having 'issues', and very serious ones at that is something of a surprise to me.
It would be good to prove/disprove this by pointing to some study or other that has listed mental health issues and their occurrence by profession but either my google fu is failing me or such a study does not exist.
