  Mental health disorders affect a large number of people, leading to many
lives being lost every year. These disorders affect struggling individuals and
businesses whose productivity decreases due to days of lost work or lower
employee performance. Recent studies provide alarming numbers of individuals
who suffer from mental health disorders, e.g., depression and anxiety, in
particular contexts, such as academia. In the context of the software industry,
there are limited studies that aim to understand the presence of mental health
disorders and the characteristics of jobs in this context that can be triggers
for the deterioration of the mental health of software professionals. In this
paper, we present the results of a survey with 500 software professionals. We
investigate different aspects of their mental health and the characteristics of
their work to identify possible triggers of mental health deterioration. Our
results provide the first evidence that mental health is a critical issue to be
addressed in the software industry, as well as raise the direction of changes
that can be done in this context to improve the mental health of software
professionals.
