statement of purpose
the thread about privacy concerns (which i agree with) brings us to a statement of purpose for this group. i think this is a very unique group, with special concerns. i would like to see us come up with a statement to pin with our concerns and ideas about what to do about them.
what do you think is unique? what do you think is necessary?
= new reply since forum marked as read
"A safe place where people can talk about mental illness and how it is affecting their lives."
I don't know when that got changed. I haven't looked at it in a long time, but it used to be longer and more nuanced and it included a part about what to do if you are suicidal. It also used to say that the group is not intended to be a substitute for mental health care. We've had people here before who were thinking about killing themselves. We've also had people here who thought of the group as a form of therapy. It might be therapeutic to find people who can relate to you when you are suffering from a mental illness or emotional distress, and that's fine. But I think it should be stated that we aren't therapists in here.
I've also been thinking about one of the issues brought up by HereSince1628, but I'm not sure what to do about it. It would be nice if we could keep what's said here right here instead of it getting linked and tweeted and facebooked and such. I don't think the admin will make special features for us here designed to make it as private as possible on the internet. Perhaps we can put something into the statement to the effect that posters in this group should keep identifying information to a minimum in their posts unless they are a goofball like me and don't mind telling the world that they have a mental illness with their unique real first name as their user handle. 
Other than that I don't know how to handle that issue.
