Edit Round 1
Tell us briefly about the speaker. What’s their occupation? Any honors or distinctions? Their recent work? Why are you recommending them?
Anthony Parsons is a veteran who served Australia and who has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result.
I am nominating Anthony because he inspired me. He inspired me to save my own life, and he inspired the same of hundreds if not thousands of others through his work founding, administrating, and otherwise maintaining the world's greatest PTSD forum, a resource created and run by those personally touched by PTSD for those living with or affected by PTSD--
MyPTSD.com.
MyPTSD offers direct support, research, testimonials, and myriad other resources to those affected by PTSD. It is my understanding that when Anthony went to psychology conferences and spoke to professionals about his dream to create an online space for those with (or otherwise affected by) PTSD, he was dismissed at every turn, for a basic feature of PTSD is extreme avoidance of the issues experienced by sufferers.
Regardless, in 2005 Anthony created the first incarnation of the MyPTSD forum, which has since grown and thrived magnificently into a website that sees over one million unique visitors annually. All staff--myself included, a now 4+-year member of the forum--are volunteers, and they put in countless hours to moderate this invaluable and irreplaceable resource of peers struggling to overcome the many pitfalls of this permanent disorder.
I have been a fan of TED for nearly as long as the forum has been saving my life in my struggle with PTSD, and I have always thought that Anthony Parsons belonged on its stage. Anthony has demonstrated global reach, maintaining a strongly connected membership from every continent. He has proven that an inspiring--albeit seemingly far-fetched--idea can change thousands of lives. The support and resources garnered through participating on the forum--in itself a type of exposure therapy--has served to arm sufferers and supporters alike with the education and community necessary to foster healing. I have no doubt it has saved lives, families, relationships, and otherwise irrevocably and beautifully altered those it has touched over the past ten years.
Anthony relies almost entirely on member donations and his own personal investment to fund server costs and improvements for the forum. Many of us living with PTSD are unemployed, on disability, or otherwise make a meager income with which to support ourselves. We are not a wealthy bunch. In spite of this, donations roll in month after month, sometimes simply anonymous donations from those who have visited and benefited from reading our on-going and ever-growing collaborative conversation about living with and managing PTSD.
To illustrate how much this community cares about Anthony and the forum's sustainability, I will share a brief anecdote. This year, Anthony's wife and co-administrator put out a call for donations. We were in danger of falling short on our $240 monthly server costs following AdSense's decision to terminate partnership with our site given the "sensitive" nature of the site's content (rape, kidnapping, childhood abuse, war, etc.). In response, members rallied a donation drive, in which we raised $3,000 among ourselves in less than a week to cover our yearly server cost. This act was nothing short of miraculous for a community of--essentially--disabled people flung across the globe and struggling, in many cases, to get out of bed or check their mail every day. Regardless, as a community we put our dollars where our hearts were in order to lessen the burden and stress on our fellow sufferer, Anthony Parsons, and his wife.
In summation, I know as an avid follower of TED that it is a global speak pipe for technology, entertainment, and design--all of which are marvelously encompassed in Anthony's execution of his dream to connect and educate those living with PTSD. It is a platform designed to encourage and spread great ideas that inspire and change the world. MyPTSD accomplishes the same, providing some respite from the gravity of this disorder among peers who understand. Anthony tirelessly continues to improve upon the realization of his dream, his great idea: a forum to connect those who are fundamentally detached and isolated the world over. TED is a free educational resource, which touts the brilliant and the idealistic without apology. MyPTSD is not so different, offering its resources completely free of charge and asking only that members who can donate do so every now and again to keep our community running. Perhaps if Anthony could share his idea through TED, the growing stigma toward suffers of PTSD, to veterans and survivors of rape and other violence, might diminish, even a little, even if only for eighteen glorious minutes.
