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I know it can be hard to find for sure, but there is a lot of online mental health support available. I’m not sure about actual free forum communities, but that might be becuase of privacy issues or the difficulty of both moderating and providing safe healthy advice.
But there are online options for therapy. Some of it is free, but most requires a fee - although there are often sliding scale options (when councelors offer lower fees if cost is an issue, there’s more who offer this than you’d think.) Finding help remotely is the way to go, it’s both more affordable and you can take the time to find someone who is right for you. I use an online therapist, she lives a few hours away and it took a few attempts to find the right fit, but it’s worth it.
There is 7 cups - they offer a lot of options. They provide just someone to talk to (volunteers, it’s free) as well as affordable options for counceling. https://www.7cups.com/
I’d also recommend Psychology Today, which lets you search for therapists both locally and online. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists
I used Psychology Today to find my therapist (there’s a Canadian version of the site) The have profiles for many, MANY therapists and psychologists, all accredited and professional. There’s a huge range of councelors, and there’s contact info. Most will be happy to tell you their rates, or offer either a free or very low cost introductory session (to see if you are the right fit)
There are also some free, self-directed therapy options in the form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. A lot of it can be done yourself, as it involves worksheets and exercises. It’s actually very effective despite sounding maybe like busy work? Hehe - I’ve also had success using CBT, both with therapists and using self-directed workbooks.
Here is a good introduction, very thorough and with links for further reading: https://positivepsychology.com/cbt-cognitive-behavioral-therapy-techniques-worksheets/
The main website here also provides some good, free resources and articles by certified councelors. https://positivepsychology.com/
Thank you very much for the resources. It’s interesting searching in that second link you provided because there are some therapists listed in my community, but neither of the two who I saw.
It gets discouraging not having much money, but I’ll try that 7cups free service first and see if I like it.
Thanks!
Great!! I hope it helps. :) I highly recommend looking into CBT as well, it’s not for everyone, but there’s a lot of CBT exercises you can do on your own (also free)
Because gravitating to an online forum is not really a way to handle most mental illness. If you’re healthy or getting healthy, you’re in a position of trying to help an endless march of people needing serious help.
And if you’re not, you’re left desperately grasping for support from people who are drowning just as much as you are, and are completely unable to help from a distance through random encounters, even if they WERE qualified.
So any community that tries to support ends up becoming a cesspool of people who are hurting and unable to get real help in the ways they are trying. It’s a recipe doomed to fail.
Don’t know how to do quotes here but:
“Any community always ends up attracting downvotes and trolls, and the conventional resources such as the suicide hotline chat are only meant to keep you talking and don’t help discuss chronic problems.”
This is pretty much it right here. It boils down to qualifications, money, and the anonymous nature of the internet. It’s hard to give real and useful advice to someone based off of only a couple of internet posts.
Offline, are you gonna run into shitty therapists who deserve to have their license revoked? Yes absolutely. But the people who can help have qualifications and charge a lot of money for their time. They’re not gonna come on the internet and dispense useless or generic advice to strangers. It would be a waste of everyone’s time, not to mention the whole issue with separating work from life.
This is it, and it’s really a broader issue with online communities for a lot of professional services in general, whether it be mental healthcare or medicine or legal services, etc. I’d argue it’s not just difficult to give real or helpful advice through these communities, but also irresponsible and potentially negligent, and that’s not even going into professional ethics issues like patient confidentiality or attorney client privilege or a whole host of other ethical concerns.
Professional services generally fall into a bucket of “above the internet’s pay grade.” You really need a licensed professional, but a licensed professional isn’t going to be distributing advice over a community forum, both because it’s typically a paid service and because they really can’t even if they wanted to.
Options are at least expanding for remote professional services, and I’d recommend looking into those options if you need specific help. I’m also not saying communities are bad and they can be great for general support and community, but they’re not a replacement for licensed professional services when those services are needed.
Adding to this thought: Covid opened up more therapists to the idea of online services.
That might be an option for you. I tried to use one, but didn’t have great success. I found the level of therapists was sub par compared to in-person. But with your already not great experiences, this may be successful for you.
for another anecdote, i really vibed with my telehealth therapist that i met last week. really looking forward to working with her!
Honestly, I think part of it is that having an entire community of people suffering depressive symptoms becomes a depressing environment.
I’m sure I heard this in a Brene Brown video, but in order to be able to help someone else, you need to be in the right place yourself. Two empty glasses can’t help fill each other. And most people can’t help an entire community of struggling people, one glass can’t help fill fifty, it’s futile and self damaging to try. It’s why we have professionals that do one on one therapy.
And, this might be unpopular, but I think historically this is why we have priests too. I’m not religious, but I think that community offers that to some people.
Sometimes people need to vent, and some people aren’t lucky enough to be in a position where they can vent to anybody, but I don’t know if diving into a community where you expose yourself to everyone else’s problems too is the solution. Things like addictions counseling are controlled, with professionals at the helm, and often in small spaces, with a prescribed meeting time and an end.
A thought — looking at your post, and the other comment here, it sounds like you are looking for a community with very low tolerance for trolls and the like. Sounds familiar… 🤔
Maybe ask the BeeHaw mods if there’s room for the community that you’re looking for: /c/mentalhealth.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d be worried about the responsibility of such a place, both in terms of modding and I guess legal liability, but it can’t hurt to ask, right? Try asking in /c/beehawsupport.
It’s not the same (potential) can of worms, but we already have /c/neurodivergent.
BeeHaw is specifically a safe space; if what you’re looking for could exist, I personally can’t imagine a better home for it.
Good point. I will work on putting together a request post in the support community.
I think even a place to talk about things with other people who’ve experienced the same things and what’s worked for us could be helpful.
Good job! 👏
Also, if there is some sort of feeling that legal liability could be an issue, you might try suggesting that the proposed community had an extended set of rules, such as “no medical advice”, “suicide talk must be reported”, etc. And maybe some guidelines with standard responses to the latter, links to prevention hotlines, that sort of thing.
A suggestion could be to peruse Reddit for a similar community, specifically to look at their rules, standard responses, etc.
Best of luck! 😃 And do report back here if you post a proposal, I’ll gladly pop by for support and upvotes 👌
Thank you for the ideas, and I’ll let you know once I’ve submitted my post!
If you link to suicide hotlines, mention which ones can send cops (under the guise of EMS) to your door without your consent. (For instance, I’d never suggest 988 because of this.) That way, users know you know what’s up and that they can trust the group’s info. And given cops’ record of shooting mentally ill people in crisis, it’s pretty important.
I think catering to a worldwide audience and offering options for all the available countries would be a good addition to your suggestion.
I live in Scandinavia, and the cops try really hard not to kill people here, mentally ill or otherwise.
Similarly, I don’t know what 988 is and that information would be very unhelpful if I were in a situation where I needed help.
In essence, I’m all for doing some deep thinking about what information to give, and taking various national idiosyncracy into account. As long as we keep in mind that not everyone is an American.
This is an excellent point and something I will keep in mind as I type up my post.
