Mental Health Awareness — For Developers

Thankfully mental health in recent times is becoming better highlighted all round in many fields. But we can do more for our community. Try as we might, we all have limits. It is recognising those limits and mitigating circumstances that allow for a more positive career and in turn life. Stress from work could even cause you an earlier death and no project is worth that.

#1 The Dreaded Burnout

Stackoverflow released a survey in 2020 highlighting a bunch of interesting statistics that we seem to align with assumptions already made about the industry. The survey says that “More than 75% of developers work overtime at least occasionally — one to two days per quarter. 25% work overtime 1–2 days per week or more.”. More than 75% working overtime in an already high stress environment can and will have serious consequences on mental health.

We use our brains all day everyday working on solving problems, any extra mental workload on top of that will eventually cause burnout. Burnout is a form of exhaustion that is caused by a number of factors but stress is one of them. I personally have been severely impacted by this in the past and I do believe it is rife within certain companies.

The problem with burnout is, if your workload is already over capacity. You’re only going to feel more…