Health Before Hustle: It’s Time to Remove The Barrier of Mental Illness Stigma From The Tech Community

Philip Delvecchio
Aug 31, 2018 · 4 min read

When I reflect on my first year in New York City, there are two important takeaways:

1. The New York City tech community has incredible value, infinite possibility, and is worth investing in

2. The more you give in to the community, the more you will get out

I’m amazed by the number of people who were willing to give their time and support to the entrepreneur community we were cultivating at my previous job and to those who were willing to give their time to me as I learned and grew in this city. It is something I have been trying to emulate as I’ve begun to explore on my own.

Which is why I’ve had nonstop meetings this past month. I was seeking ways to be helpful to as many people as possible in the same way others have been to me.

In one of these meetings, a friend asked me what my focus is during my second year in NYC. I told them my goal is to remove barriers in this ecosystem. I believe that if we can make New York’s tech scene even more accessible to all kinds of people, then the community will become exponentially more valuable as a whole.

One barrier I feel personally invested in demolishing is the stigma around mental health. A while ago I had a conversation with a VC who described the unhealthy mentality of the tech, VC, and finance space. People are often pressured to ‘hustle’ or ‘grind’ to get ahead. I knew one set of founders who snuck a mattress into their office so they never had to leave and another in which the difference between sleeping and working at his desk became unrecognizable. I used to tell people my previous job wasn’t full-time, it was all-the-time to nods of agreement and camaraderie. It should come as no surprise that 95% of HR leaders said employee burnout is sabotaging the workforce. This over-working mentality is not just a consequence of being in a fast-paced and difficult field of work. It is the new norm from which we measure success in our industry.

So when I discovered that at least one in five adults will experience a mental health problem at one point in any given year, it makes me wonder where these people fit into the equation.

Is the fast-paced environment of New York’s tech scene leaving them on the sidelines?

Has the high-pressure mentality led to people opting out of opportunities altogether?

Or worse, are we contributing to the statistic by pushing people towards their mental limits?

While the answers may not be easy, there does seem to be a stigma towards mental health issues that does not exist for physical health issues. In a recent study surveying employees in the tech industry, over 60% said if they brought up a mental health issue they were experiencing it might have negative consequences for them and only one third said they’d be comfortable discussing it with a coworker while over 70% said they would feel comfortable talking about a physical illness.

Despite discomfort discussing mental illness, the World Health Organization considers mental illness to be the highest contributor to disability or premature death. Mental illness affects a person’s mind, body, and behavior and can get in the way of a person’s ability to live, laugh, love, and learn. Therefore mental health issues should be taken seriously and a person experiencing mental illness should feel just as comfortable expressing their needs as someone with a physical illness.

So how do we remove the stigma and create a more open environment? It starts with the leaders, operators, and community builders in our industries committing to learning how to engage, support, and empathize with anyone who may be experiencing a mental health crisis or ongoing illness.

Fortunately, the city offers free training year-round for people interested in learning how to be better supporters of people with mental health Illness called Thrive NYC Mental Health First Aid Training. The training is open for any resident of New York thanks to an initiative started by Mayor De Blasio. The training was developed by Betty Kitchener, an Australian mental health literacy professor in 2001, and the goal is to train 250,000 New Yorkers, or roughly 3.5% of the population which is believed to be the number necessary to bring about change to an entire community.

Last Saturday, I underwent the training. It was a full day 8-hour training that went quick thanks to our animated and passionate instructor. Although we didn’t even scratch the surface of complexities surrounding mental health, it was a solid overview of the mental health space and equipped us with tips and tools for approaching people with mental illness and mental health crises with confidence and empathy.

To be clear, resilience, long work-hours, and going hard is not a problem as long as we are listening to our minds and bodies when they are asking us to slow down. Even I push myself too far sometimes which is why I’ve committed one of my core work values to be Health Before Hustle. And I am convinced that if we learned to be more understanding and supportive of those who operate differently due to mental illness and, if we stopped projecting a lifestyle of limit-pushing in the tech community as the status quo, then maybe we’d be welcoming a whole new group of brilliant, creative, and value-driving people to the space.

I, for one, would feel a lot healthier for it. I think we all would.


If you like what you read, have something to add, or want to learn more about what I do, drop a comment below or connect with me here!

Special thanks to King Gregg P., my incredible Mental Health First Aid Training instructor.

Hapday Group

Hapday Group is a collective of operators, experts, and creatives helping great founders expand and scale. We write about anything from inspiring business ideas, new tech, cross-border markets, and entrepreneurship.

Philip Delvecchio

Written by

Living in NYC and writing about tech, communities, and acceleration. Operations Expert, Startup Advisor, International Speaker, China enthusiast. www.hapday.co

Hapday Group

Hapday Group is a collective of operators, experts, and creatives helping great founders expand and scale. We write about anything from inspiring business ideas, new tech, cross-border markets, and entrepreneurship.

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