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Helping chat members in crisis
TheMix
Posts: 3,113 Boards Guru
Hey everyone,
We want to update you all on a change to how we safeguard members of group chat.
A lot of you will be aware that if someone presents themselves as being at immediate risk (e.g. if they are planning to end their life), our current policy is to urge that person to contact crisis support (e.g. Papyrus or Crisis Messenger) and remove them from the chat room.
There are two reasons we do this:
1) We need to protect the wellbeing of everyone else in that room. Supporting someone in crisis is something only trained professionals should do, and when we know someone's life is at risk, naturally that tends to cause a huge amount of worry and can hugely impact our own mental state. A room of other vulnerable people is not a safe place to have those conversations.
2) We're not setup to provide that level of support. We simply can't give that person the support they need because we're not trained or built for it, so we would much rather remove them from this space and point them in the direction of more suitable help.
There's a missing link in this process - we don't currently inform anybody outside of The Mix that this person's life may be at risk. However, we want to make sure we're doing absolutely everything we can for that person in that moment, so this will be changing.
**From the week of the 19th of November, we will inform emergency services if we feel someone is at immediate risk in group chat.**
In the very rare case we'll need to do this, one of the chat moderators will let you know before you are removed from the room. Someone from the staff team will also be in touch via PM the next day to check in, see how you're holding up, and generally talk through anything that happened.
For more information on what we share and other ramifications of this, check out our confidentiality policy.
Although we're changing our process, if you feel like you might be in crisis, group chat is still not a safe place to talk about these feelings. We'd encourage you to use more appropriate services such as Crisis Messenger, Samaritans or Papyrus.
Let us know your thoughts below. If you'd rather give your thoughts privately, drop us a PM.
Mike & the team
We want to update you all on a change to how we safeguard members of group chat.
A lot of you will be aware that if someone presents themselves as being at immediate risk (e.g. if they are planning to end their life), our current policy is to urge that person to contact crisis support (e.g. Papyrus or Crisis Messenger) and remove them from the chat room.
There are two reasons we do this:
1) We need to protect the wellbeing of everyone else in that room. Supporting someone in crisis is something only trained professionals should do, and when we know someone's life is at risk, naturally that tends to cause a huge amount of worry and can hugely impact our own mental state. A room of other vulnerable people is not a safe place to have those conversations.
2) We're not setup to provide that level of support. We simply can't give that person the support they need because we're not trained or built for it, so we would much rather remove them from this space and point them in the direction of more suitable help.
There's a missing link in this process - we don't currently inform anybody outside of The Mix that this person's life may be at risk. However, we want to make sure we're doing absolutely everything we can for that person in that moment, so this will be changing.
**From the week of the 19th of November, we will inform emergency services if we feel someone is at immediate risk in group chat.**
In the very rare case we'll need to do this, one of the chat moderators will let you know before you are removed from the room. Someone from the staff team will also be in touch via PM the next day to check in, see how you're holding up, and generally talk through anything that happened.
For more information on what we share and other ramifications of this, check out our confidentiality policy.
Although we're changing our process, if you feel like you might be in crisis, group chat is still not a safe place to talk about these feelings. We'd encourage you to use more appropriate services such as Crisis Messenger, Samaritans or Papyrus.
Let us know your thoughts below. If you'd rather give your thoughts privately, drop us a PM.
Mike & the team
Post edited by TheMix on
4
Comments
I like the idea though. It's really considerate for everyone and as far as I can see the best way to keep everyone safe.
We're just bringing what we do for group chat in line with what we do with the rest of our services.
Glad you like the idea overall, @LabraBell.
Mike & the team
but me playing devils advocate here I can’t help but feel that some people might never scared to share there true feelings now knowing this if that’s makes sense
like dont get me wrong I understand you have to do what you have to do to keep people safe but just a thought
Tho i agree @TheMix but just wondering how do you know which crisis would need confidenality broken and which dont? Or youre just saying is unlikely but need different crisis support instead & remove them would link that to them to give them the space & time to use? Cause may know user is in crisis and shouldnt use that specific support but even not all crisis’ need the police involved or something. Cause if that was the case that 121 crisis text message service would break confideanlity everytime i just texted the first message that contained a suciidal thought to them ha. eventho tbf that has actually happened to me twice lol
If it helps, the process we're going to be using for group chat, we currently use for the discussion boards and our 1-2-1 services. So if you'd feel comfortable talking about it here, hopefully you can feel comfortable talking about it in group chat, because the rules are the same. And as @Shaunie said, if you're worried something may go over the line, that might be a good mental nudge to use a service geared more towards what you need in that moment.
Ultimately, it comes down to whether we believe someone's life is at risk. Obviously we won't always know for sure and we'll never have 100% of the context, so we go off the information we have.
And similar to our response to @Millie2787 - we'll decide using the same process we use for the discussion boards and our 1-2-1 channels, just with a little less back and forth. So whatever your experience is of the boards, you can safely carry that over to your expectations of group chat.
Not sure if that answers your question... does that make sense?
Thanks for the feedback both of you - this helps us to be aware of what might be on peoples' minds.
Mike & the team