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Administrator
Administrator
15007 Posts
Gratitude: 3353
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 Posted - 04/18/2007 : 10:48:45
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Dear Members,
Our support communities are starting to be very different from other internet support communities. Unlike other support communities:
- Our members anonymously vote to rate posts: All members can vote to anonymously rate a post as being "Very wise", "Very caring", "Very funny", "Very honest" or "I agree". These "positive rating buttons" are used to show our gratitude for that post.
Full Members have additional rating buttons (e.g., "I disagree", "Very unclear" and "Notify administrator"). These "negative rating buttons" allow our Full Members to bring problematic posts to the attention of other members and our administrative staff. A "negative rating" is never displayed to Starting or New Members.
- We display a "Gratitude" score underneath our member's Avatar (picture): This "Gratitude" score is the sum of all the "Very Wise", "Very Caring", "Very Funny" and "Very Honest" votes that a member's posts have received. This "Gratitude" score thus measures our gratitude to that member for his/her wisdom, compassion, honesty or humor.
- Freedom of speech: Our members can discuss practically anything directly related to their community's main focus (i.e., mood disorder, schizophrenia or borderline personality disorder). However, there are a few exceptions to free speech in our communities:
- The discussion of suicide is not forbidden (however, advocating self-harm for others is forbidden).
- Certain contentious "religious" topics are forbidden (e.g., abortion [when not part of a member's personal story], criticism of other religions, etc.).
- Publicly identifying and accusing another person of a crime is strictly forbidden (e.g., "my teacher/priest, Mr. XXX, raped me"). Such allegations could result in this website being sued. However, a member can post "when I was 10, I was sexually molested by a person I trusted". In this way, no specific person was identified.
- Personally attacking another member is forbidden: Repeat violations of this rule is one of the few ways that a member can be banned from our community.
Our communities are divided into public and private parts: Like all other internet support groups, the public parts of our communities can be "googled" by any internet search engine. The private parts of our communities can't be "googled". However, only members that have posted at least 100 times can enter the private parts of our community. In this way, we try to prevent disruptive new members from causing chaos in our private communities.
Like many other internet support communities, all of our members' posts are archived and can be easily retrieved (just like at www.PsychCentral.com). In this way, we attempt to serve as a diary to record our member's day-to-day thoughts.
It is fascinating to see how internet support communities are rapidly evolving. Thus I welcome your feedback on these differences.
Phil Long M.D.
Administrator 
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Administrator
15007 Posts
Gratitude: 3353
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Posted - 11/04/2007 : 15:01:18
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Dear Members,
Making Our Community More Treatment Oriented
The introduction of our new mentorship program is another development that makes us different from other internet support communities:
http://www.mytherapy.com/discussion/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11262
By having mentors, we hope to make our support communities more therapeutic. Our goal is to have our mentorship program strengthen the bonds of friendship that exist in our community.
In the past, many members felt that they were not comfortable with sharing personal information about themselves on any public website that could be "Googled" by their family or employers (etc.).
Now, on our website, members can confidentially communicate with their mentor in the privacy of their own blog. This communication can't be seen by anyone except the member, the mentor and our website administrator.
For some of our members, this private, friendly exchange with their mentor may be the only mental health support that they have. These individuals may not have a professional therapist, or may have a therapist who is "too busy" to take time to discuss some of their pressing concerns. Thus having a mentor to talk to can be very helpful.
Our mentors are simply senior members of this community who have generously volunteered to help others with the same illness as theirs. They are not a substitute for professional care, but can complement such care with their understanding and compassion (having lived through the same illness themselves).
Both Public And Private Communication Is Needed
Some people do much better in private, one-to-one therapy than in group therapy. Likewise, on the internet, some people find private, one-to-one communication more helpful than publicly posting in a large community.
In our support community, we now support both private and public communication. Our private communication occurs in our blogs, and our public communication occurs in our community forums.
Our Administrators Must Protect Our Members From Predators
Private communication sometimes can be abused by predatory individuals hoping to prey on vulnerable members. Thus all of our private communication in our blogs is monitored by our administrative staff. Thus sexually inappropriate or abusive posts will be banned. Likewise, we must do everything to keep our members' identities anonymous. Thus we actively discourage our members giving out their email addresses etc., or ever arranging to contact another member "in real life".
Our Future Direction
There are a number of coping behaviors that research has shown are very important in recovery. We will focus more on promoting these "healthy" coping behaviors in the future.
We have already started in this direction with the "My Mood Calendar" in our blogs. These "healthy" coping behaviors will be our next main focus.
Phil Long M.D.
Administrator
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How We Are Different
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