It has been a little while since we last announced a new product or project. I was really excited to release gets by this weekend, and the response has been overwhelming and wonderful.
Mental illness and the tech community are things that have been on my mind for almost a full year now, and it’s good to finally be doing something about it, even if it’s not much.
Getting By
Gets By is a site that collects perspectives from people in tech who struggle with a mental illness. It’s a chance for them to try and explain what it’s like to live with that mental illness, a chance to share their story. We want there to be as much information as possible about this problem, and the project is meant to be inclusive by nature. We’re not doctors; we’re not qualified to say whether someone’s mental illness “counts” or is “real”. Diagnosed by a doctor or self-diagnosed, what’s important to us is how you identify. If you think you have a mental illness, that’s good enough.
Interviews cover four broad subjects: diagnosis, which is where people talk about the illness(es) they have and can tell a story about their diagnosis process; medication, which is where people can talk about the medication they’re on or prescribed and how it affects them; challenges, where people can expound on how their mental illness impacts their lives and what they struggle with; and strategies, which is where people can talk about how they cope with the challenges, and ways they’ve found to mitigate the effect their illness has on their lives.
Community-Powered
Our role in this has been minimal from the outset. We ask people if they’d like to contribute an interview, and they send it to us. We format it in Markdown, then post it to the site. Our job is to be the custodian of the site; the work, the real work, is being done by the people sharing their experiences. Talking about mental illness feels a lot like admitting a weakness, and there is still a stigma around the topic. It takes a lot of courage to publish your weaknesses like that, and it’s inspiring to see so many people with the courage to share, hoping their talking about it will help other people.
Want to submit an interview? Let us know.
