cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/1360444
For context: One of the rules in that community is that you aren't allowed to post anything related to suicide. In a mental health community.
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They're not trying to be a crisis intervention space, but more of a maintenance space for people that aren't that bad off yet.
You have to pick one as a small community, you can't be both. Because the internet-community-available tools (listening empathetically to the problem, mainly) to help at one phase can potentially hurt at another, and there isn't just one set of tools that always helps all people suffering different stages of difficulty, that can just be universally employed. Particularly at this young-community scale, where there just aren't that many participants yet.
It's regrettable, and I think this should probably be explained in the rules so they don't come off as arbitrary, but it is the way it is.
If this was a private therapy space, where "patient conversations" were private, we would not have this problem.
Yeah, I agree. I think suicide specifically needs its own community. Severe problems and mild problems just need different approaches.
Severe problems ideally need people who have been there themselves, who can speak from experience. Or people who have training.
Mild problems and health maintenance are more accessible to everyone.
A suicide-focused community with dedicated professional mods would be so nice. We would be able to direct anyone who is in crisis there. Lemmy is still young and I'm not aware of a space like that to refer anyone to, though.
Fully agreed. The importance of a specific community cannot be understated. It would be good to have it be for people who had been there as peers in the community, but the mods would have to be properly trained and vetted above all else.
Rewording is probably needed. Instead of "YOUR POST ABOUT SUICIDE IS NOT ALLOWED AND YOU'RE CAUSING PROBLEMS IF YOU DO" (not what it literally says, but how it feels to read)
I think you can hit your same goals with:
It makes the intent clear, doesn't stonewall vulnerable people, and leaves room for positives posts such as a story of how someone overcame suicide (which, based on your comment sounds like they should be allowed, but the current wording make it sound like positive posts will be blocked too)
We will work on rewording it today.
If the reason is triggering, you are ill-informed. Discussing suicide does not trigger suicidal ideation, having open discussion about it can in fact push people to reach out. Now that is not to say that random strangers on the internet should be handling suicidal people, but refusing them an outlet to reach out is arguably more harmful as long as actually suicidal people are referred to the proper channels if they post.
I disagree, chain suicides do exist and we need to carefully evaluate if our actions could be causing more of those than the people we're helping.
Well what were you expecting when you choose "mentalhealth" as the community's name? People who are that bad will show up.
Very likely. I'm not sure if there is another space to redirect them to yet, though. Lemmy doesn't have everything yet.