Am I misremembering that witnessing used to only be allowed in GD?
I think that’s against the rules, but I don’t want to pick on individual people anyway.
And sorry about your nephew. I think the preference for ‘tiptoeing’ is more a belief that greater bluntness may be counterproductive than about avoiding being rude. I know that was my main concern when I read the OP.
My concern is the difference between how we see (and treat) the mentally ill as opposed to the physically ill, sometimes inserting morality where it doesn’t belong.
I don’t think it’s possible to treat them exactly the same. There’s far more stigma around mental illness in wider culture. And in our society in particular, we see ourselves as being our minds and personalities far more so than our bodies (though in practice the two are not really separable). So it’s more damaging to self-esteem to be told there is something wrong with how your mind is working. And in general it would be extremely foolish to trust a stranger telling you to doubt your own perceptions: it would open you up to the most flagrant manipulation.
In this case, people may have good intentions, but there is unfortunately no way for the subject of their advice to know that.
It’s one thing to say “It sounds like you are going through a tough time. You might get some relief talking to a counselor” versus “You are mentally ill.”. For one, few people here are qualified to diagnose someone as mentally ill. For another, a mentally ill person may be very adverse to seeking help, especially if they are delusional. They may react poorly to the suggestion and it may cause them to delve further into their delusions. It’s typically not the case that a delusional person will respond “Oh, thank you so much! I never realized I was mentally ill. I’ll seek help right away!”. It’s usually the total opposite.
Also, if we’re allowed to call people mentally ill, then some people will take advantage of that as a way to insult people. Don’t like what the person is saying? Call them mentally ill for thinking that way. As long as you present it as your “sincere” opinion, then it would be allowed.
As for a suggestion of how to handle it, I would suggest to engage in a way that the person feels heard and supported rather than feeling attacked. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with them and support what they are saying, but rather than you make them feel valued as a person. For instance, if someone is saying that they can hear people’s thoughts, you might respond by saying that they must really be in tune with reading people. If instead you say something like “You’re crazy. Go seek help.”, the person will feel attacked and will retreat. But if you make it seem like you value them as a person and care about them, they will be more open to subtle nudges that can lead them down the path to getting help. One thing to remember is that it may be a long and complicated path for the person to get help. That’s even when the person has a close circle of friends and family who deeply care for the person. Random people on a message board have little chance of making a significant helpful impact, but there are a lot of things which they can do to make the problem worse.
That changed a two years ago, but was true for over 20 years.
The verbiage is in the GD/P&E rules.
Correct, that is the general consensus of the Moderators.
The first is allowed and second sounds like an insult even if meant to be helpful.
Instead of debating other posters, please clearly state your question to the Moderators. What you’re doing in this thread and the last one appears to be non-productive.
But I think we’ve made our position about as clear as we can on this subject. See my last post as an example.
Question for you: If a poster starts a thread saying “My neighbor’s dog comes into my house late at night and tells me I should murder my mother, but I don’t want to. What should I tell the dog?” Is it OK to suggest in polite terms that he is experiencing a serious mental illness? Or is that an insult?
There’s a simple test: are you stating something explicitly about the person? That has the potential to be “attacking the poster, not the post”, even if you believe your intent isn’t an attack.
Unsolicited advice can often be unwelcome, but it’s far safer than any statement that contains “you are…”
Please stop with the examples. They’re not really helping at this point. @Peter_Morris must get how the Moderators are handling this by now.
It’s an example because that’s how I feel about a real post, that I am trying to not mention, because how much one can or should mention is very the subject of this thread.
MHO is that if an OP is dripping with obvious crazy and with arrogance, like saying that they’ve proven Einstein or quantum mechanics wrong, then feel free to have fun poking it with a stick. But it it is dripping with obvious crazy in a sad and pathetic way then the best thing that could happen is nobody respond at all and let the thread die a merciful death.
Keep in mind that the person spouting crazy theories is someone’s friend or relative and they are worried sick about them. You don’t have to engage with them, but if you do, try to be supportive of them as a person rather than using them for entertainment. The person with the strange theories is likely feeling isolated and stressed because people don’t want to be around them. Trying to dissuade them of their illogical beliefs will often cause those beliefs to become even stronger. The person will come up with more and more illogical reasoning which make them more and more tied to their strange theory of the universe or whatever. Not engaging with them on troublesome topics is often the most compassionate course of action.
Very correct. Interacting without argument over or agreement with their perceived reality is I think best. If they are going to get help it won’t be because an online stranger tells them they are seriously ill and need help. OTOH an interaction that treats them respectfully might allow space for recognition that their experiences are causing them harm and that seeking help might offer relief from the distress these experiences cause. Obviously some at clear risk of harming themselves or others is specific circumstance, but our ability to evaluate or take action on that is very limited in this anonymized context.
How about posters apparently drunk or high posting? Make a little comment kinda humorously? Or report it? Assuming it isnt anything massively against the rules of course.
or this-
Personally I think if we’re gonna be inclusive that means including people with mental disorders, too. Most people with serious mental illness are already ostracized by their communities. Giving them a place where they are accepted (not necessarily humored, but accepted) can go a long way toward them realizing they are suffering and maybe need help. I wouldn’t say for example that I don’t want mentally ill people on the board even if they are talking about hallucinations.
My uncle was schizoaffective. He was a very complicated person who did a lot of bad things. But the one thing that was overwhelmingly impressed upon me when I saw him as a young child was how completely isolated he was. He suffered alone. For decades. Until he died. Alone.
I don’t want anyone here to experience that.
^^^ Well summarized. If I, for some reason, choose to self-identify as impaired in the mind, that’s my business. If you, on the other hand, start handing out armchair diagnoses, they aren’t likely to help anyone, and they foster an environment where posters are allowed to discredit other folks’ posts by ad hominem insinuations about their mental functioning.
If you don’t understand a post, you can say so; if you find another person’s writing style to be incomprehensibly opaque, I think you can say that as well, although it is possible to do so in such an insulting way that people find it offensive.