Take a (Virtual) Trip to the Beach: The Benefits and Challenges of Virtual Online Depression Worlds
Over the years, since I first set up a chat room on my Web site for people with depression, I’ve had to take a lot of elements into consideration that many chat room hosts do not. If you’re running a chat room centered on a non-mental health topic, it’s fairly easy. Get a critical mass of chatters and boot troublemakers out; a lot like throwing a party in real life.
Things are not quite so simple with a depression chat room. I’ve developed guidelines over the years to keep people from bringing up “trigger” topics (not discussing details of “cutting” that might trigger someone to self-harm, not discussing sexual topics because it might trigger a flashback in someone who had been sexually abused, etc.). Although I finally had the operation of the chat room down to a science, I found some new problems when I decided to add a chat room in an online virtual world.