Addressing Founder Depression – YC Hackathon project • Hacker News Board

Re: Addressing Founder Depression – YC Hackathon project

#21

Post by jonathanmalkin » Sun, Aug 03, 2014, 7:36 PM UTC

Contact me asap. I explored the same idea last year including an interview series with prominent entrepreneurs experiencing depression.

Jonathan.d.malkin@gmail.com

Re: Addressing Founder Depression – YC Hackathon project

#22

Post by MAFreemanMD » Thu, Aug 07, 2014, 4:11 AM UTC

I would like to introduce myself to this group as a former founder and CEO, psychiatrist, and mentor at the UCSF accelerator. My team includes a psychology professor at UC Berkeley and a research assistant. After the suicides of several inspiring entrepreneurs we decided to study the relationship between human factors - including mood - and a variety of outcomes including success/failure, and mental health issues. Over 400 entrepreneurs responded to our recent survey and we are now analyzing the data. We are finding meaningful results that we hope to use to educate entrepreneurs and to develop effective mental health risk reduction / performance enhancement resources for our community. Many of the questions raised in this conversation should be pretty well addressed by this research, and I will be happy to keep this community posted. Michael A. Freeman, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCSF and Mentor, The Entrepreneurship Center at UCSF.

Re: Addressing Founder Depression – YC Hackathon project

#23

Post by MAFreemanMD » Thu, Aug 07, 2014, 2:31 PM UTC

Contact information for the following post: Michael.Freeman@marincounty.net; www.MichaelAFreemanMD.com Our research is suggesting that there are actually some significant differences between the way mood spectrum conditions manifest in entrepreneurs vs. a more general population. Will have much more to report about this later. Regarding the relentlessly upbeat stereotype of founders, this image is in denial about "the downside of being up."

I would like to introduce myself to this group as a former founder and CEO, psychiatrist, and mentor at the UCSF accelerator. My team includes a psychology professor at UC Berkeley and a research assistant. Michael A. Freeman, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCSF and Mentor, The Entrepreneurship Center at UCSF.