Hi @Birdofparadise8
@Birdofparadise8 wrote:
If you were to be posting in "something not right", where would you be posting now?
The idea would be to post a thread in an area that most closely relates to what you're needing support with at that time. The categories suggested are based on themes from posts members have been making over the last 2-3 years. We are looking to encourage more topic-based threads rather than general discussions that run to hundreds or thousands of pages - these impact page load speeds and also make it difficult for new members to join in the conversation.
@Birdofparadise8 wrote:
Why do you want to combine the two parts of the forums?
The carers section of the forums is barely used (as mentioned, only 3% of all posts are made there). Members posting in the carers section often notice this, and will re-post their thread in the lived experience section. Separating out carers from lived experience also takes away an opportunity for breaking down barriers and allowing perspectives to be shared.
@Birdofparadise8 wrote:
What about having something for loneliness? I am sure a lot of people, including myself, feel lonely, and that might be nice when we can all connect.
What about specific ones for depression, eating disorders, etc, such as anxiety, SI and SH one you've mentioned below?
We will always be open to starting up new categories if a particular trend in posts starts to emerge. For example, the Life After Bushfires category that was started up a few years ago.
The idea here was to try and cover as many of the popular topics as possible without creating too many categories. Based on the current level of activity, ten well-defined categories should evenly spread out the posts (rather than the bunching we see at the moment), as well as help new members find content that they're after.
Loneliness is an interesting one: if you were looking to connect with others and just chat generally, then we would encourage the use of the Social area. If you were looking to get advice on how to manage feelings of loneliness, then there are a number of areas such a discussion might fit depending on your circumstances (e.g., Managing relationships, Stress and anxiety management).
We pulled out separate categories for stress and anxiety, suicide/SH because we can see the number of posts being made on these topics warrants a separate section.
The idea behind a 'mental health conditions' category was to gather all posts where members want to discuss a specific diagnosis (e.g., eating disorders, ADHD, BPD, depression etc). We could easily have dozens of categories if we created a separate area for each one, and we are open to doing this if we have enough threads being posted to warrant it.
