Please read the Community Guidelines - Updated 4/1/2012

[DocJohn]

Forums Mission Statement

The purpose of the Forums at Psych Central is simple -- it's a small community devoted to support for mental health and relationship issues. In that vein, you should be civil and treat others as you expect to be treated here.

Specific Terms of Use for these Forums

While the administrators and moderators of this forum will attempt to remove or edit any generally objectionable material as quickly as possible, it is impossible to review every message. Therefore you acknowledge that all posts made to these forums express the views and opinions of the author and not Psych Central, the administrators, moderators or Webmaster (except for posts by these people) and hence they will not be held liable.

You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-oriented or any other material that may violate any applicable laws. Doing so may lead to you being immediately and permanently banned (and your service provider being informed). The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. You agree that the Webmaster, administrator and moderators of this forum have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic at any time should they see fit. As a member you agree to any information you have entered above being stored in a database. This information will not be disclosed to any third party without your prior authorized consent.

These forums are for mutual support and information sharing only. Advertisements, announcements, research requests or any type of research on the content of these forums are strictly prohibited. Unless otherwise noted, copyrights of individual messages are owned and retained by their original poster. Unauthorized use or reproduction of any material found on these forums is strictly prohibited without prior authorization of the copyright holder. A valid email address is required to complete your registration. Only one member account per individual. People registering more than one account may lose all accounts on the forum, and all forum access.

Inappropriate Content

This is, first and foremost, a self-help support community. That means if your message (post or PM) isn't about offering support to another person or asking for it, it's potentially not appropriate for our community. Specifically prohibited from our community:

• Advertisements of any sort
• Announcements of one's own Web site, new resource, or book
• Announcements for research projects
• Soliciting others to join another online community
• Flames or messages meant to intimidate or harass others
• Threatening or profane messages
• Messages discussing a private message (PM) from others
• All administrative issues
• Copyrighted materials that you do not own the rights to
• Messages containing suicidal threats or suicidal actions
• Messages containing or condoning illegal acts
• Limit your direct discussion of politics and religion, as people usually hold pretty strong opinions about these topics (you can discuss spirituality in the Sanctuary for Spiritual Support)
• Triggering material without the use of the Trigger Icon
• Anything that violates the Terms of Use for this site
• Pedophiles, rapists, and others that have abused another individual physically, psychologically, emotionally or sexually (generally real or acted-upon) are not welcome here because our focus is on support for victims of such abuse; the two are not compatible with one another. Exceptions can be made on a case-by-case basis.
• Members should not speak for other members; or for/against past members who have not been banned or suspended. If a member (or past member) wants to say something, they are welcomed to do so themselves (if they've left on their own accord).
• Specific numbers should not be used in talking about weight gain/loss, BMI, or body measurements in the Eating Disorders forum.

Remember that these are Guidelines, not rules, so exceptions can and will be made from time to time for specific circumstances, as determined by the Community Support Team on a case-by-case basis.

For links to other websites, the following guidelines apply:

• Links in your profile are fine. Link to almost anything you want in your profile page, as long as it doesn't violate our sexual, illegal activities, or profanity guidelines.
• Links on a post to anything online are okay, as long as it's your personal site, photos, a research article, an article or resource you personally have found useful or helpful, a helpful tip, etc. We don't want to see people abusing this by saying, "Hey, I just updated my site" and posting about it every week.
• Please refrain from posting links to other communities solely in order to solicit other members to that community.
• Please refrain from posting links without accompanying text (e.g., a personally-written 5-10 sentence description, summary or opinion about the link). We are first and foremost a discussion support forum, and links posted without any accompanying text are not conducive to discussion or support.

For signatures:

• Links in your signature are okay, as long as they are to your personal site, a charity, a helpful resource or article you'd like others to know about, a project or non-profit effort. Generally, no self-promotional links are allowed in one's signature; exceptions, however, may be made on a case by case basis.
• Pictures in signatures should be no bigger than 30 Kb in size AND 400 x 150 pixels in dimension (60,000 pixels in total dimension size). Your signature picture can be of different dimensions than 400px x 150px, as long as its total size is less than 60,000 pixels.

For custom member titles (after you've reached 2,000 posts), you cannot use:

• Any existing forum titles based upon post levels
• Anything profane, sexual, political or religious in nature
• Anything suggesting you are a professional therapist or doctor
• Anything suggesting you are a member of the community support team
• Anything suggesting you are a member of the Psych Central staff (formally or informally)

(If you abuse the custom titles, you will get one warning; then the custom titles privilege will be removed.)

When in doubt about appropriate content, contact any moderator before posting questionable material.

Use of Intellectual Property

All users, visitors and members who access this forum agree not to copy and paste, quote, print-out, distribute, or otherwise use a member's postings or other contributions to the community on another website, blog, or service (including Psych Central's free user blogs) without first obtaining the expressed written consent and permission of the author to do so via a PM or email.

Photo Gallery

Our photo gallery is for use by registered members. Members are free to post any photograph or image that they have the intellectual property rights to. That means that members should refrain from posting copyrighted material (unless they are the author of the material) or any photo featuring individuals who have not given their expressed permission. No lewd, pornographic or obscene images are permitted. Any photo or graphic in the photo gallery found to be violating this guideline will be removed and the member warned.

Forums are Research-Free

These forums strictly prohibit any research being conducted on them for any purpose whatsoever. Any user of this forum is prohibited from conducting research on the forums in any form, whether it be as a group or on an individual poster.

I don't believe it feels very good or very safe if you feel like anything you might want to share or write about might one day end up in some random professional journal, archived for all of time. I prohibit any and all research to be conducted on posts herein.

How do I add formatting or images to my post?

Please see the section in the FAQ on HTML markup tags allowed in posts:

forums.psychcentral.com/faq.php

Who owns what I write here?

You do! Each author is the sole owner of his or her own posts. No one is allowed to reproduce your post under U.S. copyright provisions unless you give explicit permission for them to do so, or they are making use of part of your post under the 'fair use' provisions of copyright case law. You give Psych Central a license to reproduce your post on our site, as per our Terms of Use.

Can I post other people's images and photos I found on the Internet here?

Generally, photographs and images on other sites are copyrighted and cannot be used in the forums without the express permission of the author. Please do not post images or photos from other websites without first obtaining the author's permission. Any such copyrighted material will be removed without notice.

What's your privacy policy?

Our privacy statement is available.

You should be aware that we allow Google and other search engines to index our community, in order to help others who are searching for a safe and supportive online self-help support community for mental health issues find us. Please do not post identifying information here that you wouldn't want to be seen by those who know you in your life.

Who are the moderators here and how do I contact one?
Please feel free to contact any of the moderators (listed at the bottom of each forum's index page) if you need assistance or have questions or concerns regarding specific posts. There are two ways to contact a moderator. The first is if you're reading a thread and see a post of questionable content, you can click on the Report Post icon () of the post in question and that will automatically alert the moderators to the questionable content. They will then review it and make a decision on whether the post is appropriate or not. The other way to contact a moderator is to privately message (PM) them directly. You can do this by clicking on a moderator's name in a thread. Refusing to cooperate with the request or directive of a moderator or administrator may result in your suspension from the community.

[DocJohn]

This is the current list of active moderators and administrators here at Psych Central.