Families for Depression Awareness Holds First Boston Area Event to Raise Awareness of Depression
WOBURN, MA. - April 24, 2012 - CloudBees, Inc. , the Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) innovation leader, has joined with Waltham-based Families for Depression Awareness to support Strides Against Stigma on Saturday, April 28, from 10:00am - 3:00pm at Boston University. Strides Against Stigma is an event being held to raise awareness of depression and to build a community dedicated to erasing the stigma surrounding it.
Hundreds of participants will gather at BU's Nickerson Field and enjoy a variety of fun activities, celebrity appearances, performances and games while counting strides on pedometers.
Depression affects about 20 million adults in the United States every year, including one in every eight teenagers. In fact, suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people and depression is the leading cause of teen suicide. Many people struggling with the symptoms of depression do not seek help because they are afraid of the stigma attached to depression, or ashamed of the way they feel.
"It is wonderful to see CloudBees come together to support families struggling with depression," says Julie Totten, President of Families for Depression Awareness. "It is crucial for companies to make employees aware of depression so that they can get help, recover and lead healthy lives."
"CloudBees is proud to participate in this event. With our headquarters located in the Boston area, we believe strongly in giving back to the Massachusetts community within which we operate and within which our Woburn-based employees live," said Jim McLoughlin, vice president of sales, CloudBees. "Mental health is an important part of daily life for everyone and, yet, there is so little awareness of the struggle with depression that many young teens and adults deal with every day. CloudBees wants to help impact positive change in building support for these people and their families."
CloudBees will have a team of striders participate in the event. In addition to CloudBees, other Boston-area organizations who are supporting the event include: the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, McLean Hospital, AAA of Southern New England, the Boston Bruins, the Boston Redsox, Bertucci's, Magic 106.7, WROR 105.7, WBOS 92.9, Country 102.5, Austen Riggs Center, Boloco, and South End Athletic Company.
Massachusetts First Lady Diane Patrick, Esq., will speak at the event. Other personalities involved in the event include: Greg Stiemsma of the Boston Celtics, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley and television journalist Jane Pauley.
For more information visit: www.stridesagainststigma.org
About CloudBees
CloudBees (cloudbees.com ) turbo-charges the way Java applications are built and deployed to meet the rapid pace of business in an on-line and increasingly mobile world. By eliminating the friction caused by provisioning, maintaining and administering complex hardware and software infrastructure, we streamline and accelerate the entire Java application lifecycle from development to deployment. The CloudBees platform provides a set of rich services that are easily consumed by developers allowing them to rapidly build and deploy new business applications with zero IT administrative overhead. Our AnyCloud Service Architecture enables those applications to be easily deployed to any public, regional or enterprise cloud environment. CloudBees serves the needs of a wide range of businesses from small startups that want to focus on quickly creating new on-line businesses to large IT organizations that need to rapidly respond to new business application projects.
Backed by Matrix Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners, CloudBees was founded in 2010 by former JBoss CTO Sacha Labourey and an elite team of middleware and open source technology professionals.
About Families for Depression Awareness
Families for Depression Awareness, www.familyaware.org , is a national nonprofit organization helping families and friends recognize and cope with depressive disorders to get people well and prevent suicides. The organization provides education and training to support families. The organization is made up of families who have lost a relative to suicide or have watched a loved one suffer with depression, with little knowledge of how to help.
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