User safety!

Thursday 19. July 2007

Depnet cares about the safety of our users. The moderators care and the users care. We want to see everyone safe and hopefully on the road to wellness. We must again stress the importance of using appropriate channels in times of crisis, more specifically during an attempt to self harm. Online friends can support and help you to a point, which is why resources like this exist. But in a real crisis, you must know that you cannot rely on the Internet to save you.

Everyone must realise that it is dangerous to rely on a website to react to an immediate crisis for many reasons.

First, a website relies on technology to remain live....technology fails. At any time a server may go down, there may be a power outage or your own computer system may crash.

Second, your posting may remain unread, be read by the 'wrong sort of person' and then be open to abusive comments, or be misread....

Third, Depnet has limited information on our users whereabouts, we only have what is in your profile. Unlike what we see in the movies we don't have a magical power to trace a user in seconds; we rely on ISP's to do this and even if we report a problem to an ISP we have limited power over what they choose to do with the information request. Since the police have the power to rapidly action a follow-up and as a result of the recent events, in future, all serious threats to self harm or reports that a user is in trouble will be reported to the police for follow-up.

Fourth, please consider your fellow users. There are many unwell people who rely on this Community for support and friendship. Many of them cannot cope with the stress of someone threatening to or documenting their attempt to suicide on site. We have had users leave the site because they felt threats like this compromised their own mental health.

In conclusion, we stress, please use 000, Lifeline 13 11 14 or suicide helpline 1300 651 251 if you are in crisis and serious about suicide. Contact your doctor, you local community crisis team (CATT) or your nearest emergency department.

Please make sure you get real help.

All our best
The Team at Depnet