We do need to talk about mental health. As a culture. But, sorry, I am not going to read Techcrunch article about it.
Even publications that dedicated to following mental health (and ostensibly authored by "experts" in the field) tend to do a dubious job of describing what is an extremely complicated problem to which THERE IS NO QUICK FIX. Read that again. Addressing mental healthy problems is very hard work and treatment plans vary by individuals (not even by disease) so even once you find a doctor you like - no easy task - and whether you go into psychotherapy or the psychiatric [aka prescribed] route or both - you have a long, hard road ahead of you which will require a lot of patience from you and those that you maintain relationships with whether they are work or personal.
There are lots of mental health disorders of which depression is a common symptom. It's important to work with a doctor you feel comfortable with to figure out if you suffer from depression, or if the root cause is some other disorder (OCD, bi-polar, anxiety are common amongst SDE types) which routinely causes you to feel depressed for days or weeks (or god forbid, months) at a time.
Even if you are comfortable going the medication route (and there are many reasons why this choice should not be made lightly, especially if it is via anti-depressants or another - they're all habit forming and bring their own set of side-effects and problems), it is a long an arduous process to find the right one/right dosage/etc. that will work for you (if there even is one). Each one takes weeks to see results typically.
Anti-depressants help some people greatly. Others will struggle with them and find them counter-productive to their treatment. There is no one-size-fits-all treatment plan. Mental health is a subject that doesn't get attention in any facet of American culture.
PS. There is no evidence to suggest that the software industry suffers disproportionately from mental health issues compared to any other.
Even publications that dedicated to following mental health (and ostensibly authored by "experts" in the field) tend to do a dubious job of describing what is an extremely complicated problem to which THERE IS NO QUICK FIX. Read that again. Addressing mental healthy problems is very hard work and treatment plans vary by individuals (not even by disease) so even once you find a doctor you like - no easy task - and whether you go into psychotherapy or the psychiatric [aka prescribed] route or both - you have a long, hard road ahead of you which will require a lot of patience from you and those that you maintain relationships with whether they are work or personal.
There are lots of mental health disorders of which depression is a common symptom. It's important to work with a doctor you feel comfortable with to figure out if you suffer from depression, or if the root cause is some other disorder (OCD, bi-polar, anxiety are common amongst SDE types) which routinely causes you to feel depressed for days or weeks (or god forbid, months) at a time.
Even if you are comfortable going the medication route (and there are many reasons why this choice should not be made lightly, especially if it is via anti-depressants or another - they're all habit forming and bring their own set of side-effects and problems), it is a long an arduous process to find the right one/right dosage/etc. that will work for you (if there even is one). Each one takes weeks to see results typically.
Anti-depressants help some people greatly. Others will struggle with them and find them counter-productive to their treatment. There is no one-size-fits-all treatment plan. Mental health is a subject that doesn't get attention in any facet of American culture.
PS. There is no evidence to suggest that the software industry suffers disproportionately from mental health issues compared to any other.