Mental Wellness

Mental wellness can be a challenge at times and we can support one another in various ways by sharing our experiences and potentially helpful resources.

RESOURCES

Helpful wellness tools and books

We have found useful wellness tools worth sharing with each other. If you would like to add resources to this list, click Edit.

BEHAVIORAL THERAPY TECHNIQUES

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a powerful way of understanding and transforming internal thoughts and emotions that has become one of the best tools for psychologists to teach patients to actually get more peace and control in everyday life.
• Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is a more robust approach than CBT for working through more intense issues.
• Dialetical Behavioral Therapy Skills Workbook: A free PDF book that teaches a set of distress tolerance and mindfulness skills that is a good set of practices to start improving your mental wellbeing. You can use the book on your own or in preparation for or in tandem with the support of professional DBT therapy.

Mental wellness groups

• bluehackers.org: An online support group and information resource for hackers dealing with depression.
  • Checkout the brain hacking section
• National Alliance on Mental Illness San Francisco: Nami provides information about how to treat mental illness and overcome thoughts of suicide and depression.
• National Alliance on Mental Illness Main Site
• Depression Bipolar Support Alliance: Resource guide for overcoming depression and bipolar illness including relevant readings, and guides for times of crisis.
• Stoicism is a philosophy of courage that originates in ancient Greece and is practiced by many creators today to weather the ups and downs of creative life.

Meditation

Meditation is a powerful way to still the mind.

• San Francisco Zen Center is a place where you can go to join in meditation sessions and learn about mindfulness (maintaining a meditative state of mind in life).

Non-violent communication

NVC is a way of playing "making life wonderful" where we give through listening instead of playing "who's right?" where everybody loses.

• Marshall Rosenberg explains non-violent communication
• Center for Nonviolent Communication is a community where you can meet people to practice listening and communicating observations, needs, feelings and requests. It can greatly help understanding of oneself and relationships with others. CNVC has free trainings available to help practice NVC that are a great way to learn.

EMERGENCY CONTACTS

SFGH Psychiatric Emergency Services 1001 Potrero Avenue Ph: 415-206-8125

An emergency care provider which provides assessment, general mental health services, intensive case management and medication support, seven days per week, in an effort to ameliorate crisis situations and to divert from Psychiatric Emergency Services OR to facilitate admissions to acute psychiatric hospitals when necessary. Is linked with 911 and other emergency providers. Provides emergency coverage for adult clients of the system. Mobile crisis also provides response for geriatric crisis and HIV crisis after 5 p.m. and on weekends

Mobile Crisis Treatment Team Ph: 415-355-8300

Mobile Crisis provides emergency crisis intervention services conducted in the field, early intervention in the field before situation escalates to critical crisis point, and consultation services provided to consumers, support systems, mental health providers and shelter providers. Assistance with linkage to outpatient mental health services. It has involuntary treatment evaluation capacity and determination of appropriate level of care. Psychiatry available for short-term medication services. Available to all adult residents (18 - 59 years of age) regardless of insurance.

Crisis Services: Immediate treatment or triage for voluntary individuals suffering from emotional crisis or symptoms of acute psychiatric illness, including symptoms induced by substance abuse and HIV infection. Brief crisis treatment and on-going outpatient care and medication for clients who can remain in the community with medication support. Provides 5150 (involuntary hold and/or treatment under state law) as needed to inpatient hospital care. Linkage to community follow-up and treatment.

Dore Free Treatment Center

• 415-553-3100
• http://sfhomeless.wikia.com/wiki/Dore
• Psychiatric Emergency Service
• 52 Dore Street, between Folsom & Howard, and between 9th and 10th.
• Hours: As of July 1 2009 we are open 24 hours a day/7 days a week.

DUCC is a social model rehabilitation approach to crisis intervention. The program is designed to assist SFGH Psychiatric Emergency (PES) and other hospital emergency services by accepting adult clients in psychiatric crisis who do not require hospitalization but who are currently taken to PES for evaluation and treatment. Call and ask for a clinician to present a client. In many cases we can help arrange transportation.

Westside Crisis Clinic 888 Turk Street at Gough Ph: 415-353-5050

Suicide Prevention: Telephone counseling and referral for people who are depressed and suicidal. Mental Health and drug service information and referral available 24 hours a day. Drug relapse prevention support available 24 hours a day. Support for those with HIV and AIDS available 5 p.m. to 5 a.m.

San Francisco Suicide Prevention Ph: 415-781-0500

Urgent Care: Brief intervention that is provided in cases of non-emergent but stressful conditions which require contact within 24 hours. Services include: assessment, general mental health services, case management and medication support.

Personal Support

Here is a list of people who have added themselves as someone you can call or email or text at any time if you need or want someone to talk to.

Name	Phone	email
Mitch Altman	415-377-5993	maltman23 at hotmail dot com
your name here	your phone number here	your email address here

HISTORICAL MENTAL WELLNESSS INITIATIVES

We used to run a Geeks & Depression mutual support group. The information below is historical and no meetup currently exists.

Mental Wellness Support Groups

• Fireweed Collective Support Groups are free online Zoom-based gatherings. Fireweed Collective is a peer group that meets to share experiences and tools for mental wellness.

Geek Mental Wellness Peer Group

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT

You are not alone. Share your story, if you like. Share a friend's story. Or just hang out and listen. Let's make it OK to talk about these things so that we don't feel alone with our feelings of being alone and depressed or suicidal.

This is not a support group -- none of us are trained professionals, but we can get together in a safe, confidential space to talk about depression and suicide -- an important part of life for so many of us geeks.

WHEN

IcarusSF meetups are currently planning meetings to get the group off to a good restart.

• Nov 3 2015: We held our first meeting and we'll be meeting again to finalize planning for the first public meeting.

ORGANIZER CONTACTS

• lxpk
• Douglas
• Joyti

GOOGLE GROUP

Please join the google group to be kept informed:

• https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/geeksanddepression

WHERE

• Noisebridge Hackerspace, 2169 Mission Street, San Francisco, Turing Room (Getting here)
• Previous meetups were at:
  No Starch Press, 38 Ringold Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 (near Civic Center BART Station)

November 3 Planning Meeting Notes

Douglas, lxpk and Joyti met.

Ideas

• Super safe space
• No threats of violence or sexism

• talking circle checkins
• passing a talking circle feather is a way of having an automatic stack without singling out those who haven't spoken in a while
• if you don't have the feather you don't speak

manners

• no pointing, that's something some people have had done to them

• total privacy of everything said
• example roleplay of an excellent respecting of privacy

• Eat food together to start nourished

• Beginning with learning the Non-violent communication concept
• Using I statements
• NVC one page

• Cognitive behavioral therapy
• Breathing
• Visualization

• Discussion of triggering and when sharing intense personal stories, one on one breakout conversations may be wise

• Time structuring so we don't spend all the time on a single thing

Questions

• How often should sessions be?
  • One way to do it would be to start with a first event, see how it goes, make it monthly from there, see if the second one goes well too, and then try to become biweekly and then weekly as the number of core facilitators to make sure there is always non-zero number of facilitators.
• How long should each session be?
  • As long as people need to have their chance to share?
  • The end can be when everyone checks in that they feel complete about sharing

• Why do we want to create this?
  • Because this is something that we ourselves feel a need for.