Brain Health: Why I Choose to be Open

Posted by: davidkircos 6 years, 11 months ago

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A few months ago I wrote a blog post describing my personal struggle with depression. That post was the first time many people who know me realized that I was struggling with depression.

Friends reached out offering support and about 10 people shared with me their own experience with depression.

All of a sudden I wasn’t alone. Without intending to I had built a support community for myself and a network of others who share the same struggle.

This support community has been enormously helpful in avoiding depressive episodes and working through them when they do happen. It has been a life line and helped me to realize that I am among a huge, hidden group of people struggling with an atypical neurology and the data supports it.

Over 20% of people experience a brain condition and that number jumps 2x in the tech industry. So I began to wonder, if I only found this community because of my blog post, where is everyone else finding support?

Through my work at Techstars, I found Sigmend’s Open Labs whose founders graduated from our Boulder Accelerator in 2016. They have since built a nonprofit support system that focuses on people with a bipolar neurology. Open Labs creates a line for people who are bipolar to communicate and support each other. They talk about bipolar as a neurotype that falls within the set of natural human variation instead of a pathology or disorder that should be cured. The goal is to create a safe and empowering environment for those who impacted by bipolar to thrive, and give them the hope they need to live openly.

There is often little consideration for how to live with neurologically different people, the focus is mostly on pushing them back into the “normal” bucket. I don’t believe this is the right way to treat any type of diversity. Diversity fundamentally should be celebrated. Neurodiversity is no different.

People whose minds work differently than the median neurology are very valuable to society the way they are. Finding ways to help individuals with neurological differences embrace their differences as an asset is much more productive than considering all neurological differences a problem.

I’ve also chosen to join Sigmend’s Open Council, a group of people who lend our names and expertise to the Open Labs mission to support the practice of open conversations about brain health in and beyond the workplace.

If you are impacted by bipolar neurology or know someone who is, I encourage you to share Open Labs with them. Being open about depression significantly improved my ability to effectively deal with the condition. Open Labs does the same for those who are on the bipolar spectrum and their allies.

This post originally appeared on blog.sigmend.com

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