Mental Health Forum Guidelines

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ocean

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MENTAL HEALTH
Forum Guidelines

The mission of the Bluelight Mental Health Forum is to create a supportive peer community for those diagnosed with psychiatric disorders and/or mental illness. Recognizing the powerful healing that comes of sharing our own experiences, trials, strategies and outcomes, we can enter the current dialog and evolution of psychiatric treatment not merely as passive consumers but as stronger, informed individuals empowered to take positive action towards managing our health and improving our lives.

It is of utmost importance to understand that this is not a site for medical advice. This forum is not staffed by qualified medically trained personnel.Any medical information obtained from the Internet should be researched and cross-referenced and ultimately discussed with a qualified health care provider.


Introduction

Welcome to Mental Health!
Mental Health is a Bluelight forum focused on general mental health discussion about treatment options, medications, and a place for supporting one another in the journey to greater psychological awareness. This includes mental illness, self-harm, eating disorders and many other serious life obstacles. Some here have gone through and experienced a great deal of their own darker moments, and remain a part of this community with a desire to be of assistance to others who are looking to gain more knowledge and treatments, and develop new ways of learning to manage and cope with their own personal mental struggles. MH is here for people wanting to learn new coping mechanisms, reach greater self awareness, to seek and offer support, as well as general discussion of psychology. We encourage sharing your experiences with sensitivity to others, always with an understanding that with mental illness everyone is different.



Recovery Support Staff

Please do not hesitate to contact any of the Recovery Support staff with questions, concerns or suggestions about the forum. We are here to help grow the community. If your question/suggestion is either about the forum's guidelines or the way something is handled in Mental Health, it is best to PM a moderator. If you have a specific problem with a given moderator, either PM that moderator, or contact a member of the senior staff.

Moderators

AlphaMethylPhenyl
VerbalTruist
Jerry Atrick

Senior Moderator

VerbalTruist


Forum Rules

Given the sensitive nature of this forum, it's inevitable that rules must be enforced.

Summary

Forum guidelines are in addition to the Bluelight User Agreement (BLUA) that is enforced across Bluelight.

MH is primarily here for people who may have mental and/or physical health problems, drug-induced or otherwise.It is a forum where peers can discuss others experiences, types of therapy, or medications. MH also has members with self-injury problems. In this area especially, anything likely to trigger self-injuring behavior is not permitted -- in particular images and videos, but text-posts can be triggering at times as well.

Many MH members are working to reduce drug or alcohol use or obtain abstinence from them, as a result posts or pictures that glamorize use are not appropriate in this forum. Bluelight has other forums in which to discuss recovery from drug addiction - in specific, please refer to the Recovery Support forum. However, as addiction and mental health frequently go hand-in-hand people should be free to discuss their struggles with drugs without judgment.

Specific Guidelines for Posting in the Mental Health Forum:

  • Never advise anyone to start, alter the dosage or abruptly stop a medication. Abruptly stopping or inadequately tapering a medication can have disastrous effects.
  • Never advise the use of legal or illegal drugs to self-medicate. Self-medication can lead to larger problems when not regulated by a knowledgeable practitioner.
  • Never give any legal advice out to other members, even if their story seems to be similar to your experience with legal activity. This especially pertains to court orders, involuntary psychiatric admissions, community treatment orders, being "sectioned", etc. If you require legal assistance you must seek it out yourself, and any posts going against this guideline will be immediately deleted.
  • When sharing personal experiences, opinions or anecdotal information regarding medications or treatments it is important that readers understand that what you are saying is your own valid perspective but not necessarily objective fact.
  • Always remember that people may be vulnerable or in crisis. When posting advice, it is good practice to stress that the person also seek professional help in addition to the support of Bluelight.
  • Rude or abusive posts will not be tolerated. Mental health diagnosis and treatment is very controversial. It is a complex subject that we all feel very passionate about for extremely personal reasons. Always keep in mind that the goal of discussion and debate is to expand knowledge, not to contract it.

Additional Guidelines for Posting in Mental Health:

  • Treat others with respect; i.e. no "flaming," "trolling" or posting of "memes."
  • Do not use SWIM; be honest about the subjects within your stories.
  • "Tough Love" is appropriate at times, but keep in mind the mental state of the individual in need and use appropriate discretion.
  • Do not post images of cuts, burns, wounds and the like - self-inflicted or not.
  • Do not post pictures of drugs or alcohol.
  • Nudity will not be tolerated.
  • Do not place "triggering" material, even behind NSFW tags. If it's questionable enough to feel the need to do so, don't post it at all.
  • If a post is edited by a Moderator, do not edit the post. You can PM the Moderator or any other MH Staff member to discuss the edit or removal of a post if you are not clear on why.
  • Refrain from posting anything that may be triggering to others.

Safety Disclaimer

Even though some TDS/MH members are in professional positions in real life, Mental Health is a non-professional support effort. We neither diagnose nor prescribe here. It is better to give our ideas about the nature of other people's problems or the tactics they may use to get better as suggestions rather than as declarations.

Mental Health is not is 'crisis line', and if you or a friend are in immediate danger there are links and phone numbers provided for immediate help or mental health-related resources. Some situations create a need to tell people to take common sense, reasonable actions like getting to a hospital or doctor in the midst of an overdose and/or suicide attempt.

Abusive Posts

Many MH threads require more tactfulness than ordinary posting situations. Posts that are intended to shame, humiliate, or provoke are not acceptable here. If a member is a continuous irritant to another member, but is not attacking anyone nor breaking any rules, then the best solution is to put the member you have problems with on your ignore list via UserCP.
If someone is creating a hostile environment, breaking BLUA or forum guidelines, we ask you to please use the report function ().
The report function calls the situation to the attention of the entire MH/TDS/SL staff.
It's often tempting to reply to such posts, but by using the report function, The Recovery Section Staff will use their best judgment in order to remedy the situation.
You may also reach out to any of the moderators, if you feel that after reporting a post, the issue has not been dealt with appropriately.

Useful Links



Here are some links to threads within the forum and its Archive (current versions given):

Themed Threads - Help/Treatment


Information Threads


In Conclusion

Mental Health contains a staff eager to help and many regular participants who offer great contributions. Mental Health is yet another hallmark of how useful Bluelight can be, and we encourage people to not be afraid to open up within it. To an extent, we all can understand the struggles that others go through, and in the end we're all here to help each other improve our lives.
 
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