I’ve noticed a bit of a reduction in activity by some long time members. Not going to name names, but it’s painful to see when this happens. New, active, positive members come in slowly here and, even if it wasnt already hard to see longtime members fade a bit, our replacement rate is not real high.
I would hate to see this forum fizzle out because too many old members fade away and become disinterested, as this is the last bastion to keep our group together.
If there is anything we can do to improve or make this forum more hospitible, feel free to pm staff or me and we will do our best to take any suggestions seriously.
As I have said repeatedly, this forum will stay up as long as it is needed by members. It’s not going anywhere, but we want to keep it as vibrant and alive as possible.
It may just be a phase, but it worries me a bit. The old forum was on a decline for a long time but we do not want to see that continue here. We’d like to continue to grow. Not expecting miracle growth, but a slow but steady increase would be nice instead the painful decline of the old forum.
Maybe my perception of it is exxagerated. I can see a bit of it in the stats and I have noticed certain members dont read or post as much. It may be that I am reading too much into it.
Its kind of stalled a bit. We sold the condo and got a big tax refund, so the urgency is not there anymore. We are still selling stuff on Ebay for now, though.
I don’t post too much these days because I’m insanely busy with grad school, work, and my internship.
I’ll be around for a while, but might have to bow out later down the road when I start doing clinical work out of respect for this being a peer community.
I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it, but I’m in a very weird place where my identity as a person with schizoaffective disorder is blending with my job in mental health and future as a social worker.
Don’t know what I’ll do for support later, but that’s for me to figure out.
Thanks again for doing this for the community @SzSupportAdmin and donors. For what it’s worth this is a very “human service” thing to do.
I was a frequent member on the old forum for a few years. But then I started to get in my head about other members on it being annoyed by me and my comments/posts, and I had maybe too much of a presence on that forum. There wasn’t really much evidence of that worry I was having. Maybe I’m just super self-conscious and second-guess myself a lot? Who knows. But I ended up taking a break for a while. Visited this new forum only a little bit so far.
I pray that this forum prospers and that lots of those who are struggling find some comraderie on here with thier sz/sza siblings in this mental health struggle we face.
I try to be active here. Unfortunately a lot of my posts get less of a response than that I’ve tended to get on the original forum. That could reflect differences in how this forum is used compared to the original forum.
I respond when I can, my usage has declined over the years but that’s ok as I have been improving and I think its natural if you improve then you ay start to look at doing other things that can take up more of your time, I miss sacredneigh the Aussie girl, she was fun, yeah I miss some of the regulars, I like the likes as it makes me feel appreciated as well.
I post less because I’m struggling with being afraid people will figure out it’s me and I’m afraid of the repercussions of that. Im afraid of other issues too. But im still here and posting so im probably not who you’re referring to
I did some research, and the consensus is that long time users of mental health forums tend to become less active due to the following: improvements in managing their symptoms; cumulative exposure to distress makes them feel worse; burnout and compassion fatigue; disagreements with other members or challenging interactions with moderators; a familiarity with posts that reduce the perceived usefulness of the forum.
I’m 62, and consider myself an active user, but I’m, to my knowledge, the 4th-oldest active user on the forum. That makes me an outlier because according to my research, mental health forum activity is typically most active among younger users:
Age 18-29: 37%
Age 30-45: 28%
Age 46-61: 14%
Age 62-80: 3%
Specifically to this forum, I think we’re coming out of a “honeymoon period.” As has been said, we don’t have enough data to make any conclusions on long-term member activity, but it’s not the long time members that drive activity, it’s the members 18-45 years old.
