Social Anxiety Disorder board

[billie]

Perhaps having a forum for people afflicted by Social Anxiety Disorder would be a good idea. Supposedly over 7% (approx. 1 in 14 people) of the US population suffer from it, although I have no idea how many people have it worldwide, in the US (where I live), or on this board. Symptoms usually emerge during adolescence (if ever), so such a forum would be appropriate for the users of this board. It is a hugely under-diagnosed illness, so making people aware of it is probably a good idea. What do you mods all think?

[TheWizard]

let me think about

[Whisper]

Whatever Josh says. For two reasons

1
Josh started this site so as far as I am concered what he says goes.

2
Look at how well this site is working out, I think he knows what he's doing.

[Jono]

I think a shake up of forums that aren't working is needed. We should have a trial forum for everything, see how it works out and then decide.

[Doug]

Maybe we should merge a couple forums, because the list is getting quite long, and many aren't being used as much as we have hoped.

[TheWizard]

I'm open to suggestions. What forums do you think we don't need?

[Dfsg]

Well, if we were to have a social anxiety forum, we should just make a Depression and Social Anxiety forum, since the disorders are often related and treated similarly.

As for nixing a few forums, you could put the eating dissorder forum in the "Other Mental Illness" forum. Then, you coudl change the forum description to say something like "For Epileptics, Narcoleptics, Bulemics, Anorexics, etc" And just keep adding on the list as people with those particular disorders join the site.

Maybe even the ADD and Bi-Polar forums could be catagorized like that within the other mental illnesses forum. I still think they should be given a chance, though.

[billie]

As a mere suggestion, would it be possible to request the members of this board to complete a survey about which forums interest them most? The demographic characteristics of those that use this board seem to be teenagers who self-injure... I don't know whether this is because Josh's connections in GovTeen are predominantly 'cutters' or whether it is just chance, but perhaps it is a good idea to find out more about the users of this board in order to make more informed decisions about which forums to bin, which to keep and which to create.

Just an idea.

[TheWizard]

Sounds like a good idea to me. :)

[billie]

Wow! :D :D I'm so pleased you like the sound of my idea! My only hesitation concerns how up-for-it the members of the board would be... the survey would probably be anonymous, but I belive most US-based teenagers are back at school...

I did try a couple of survey applications and PHPSurveyor http://phpsurveyor.sourceforge.net/ has a nice interface, has all the right features like branched surveys (set conditions on whether individual questions will display), exporting of results in various formats like Excel, and customising whether questions will display in groups, one-by-one or all on one page.

I have hosting space with a decent webhost and quite literally gigabytes of unused bandwidth, as well as an easy-install system called Fantastico that takes the hassle out of installing web-based software, so I would be happy to do it if you don't want to/don't have the capability to/[insert other reason].

[TheWizard]

I don't know how to do it so if you can will you do it?

[billie]

Oh yes! Absolutely! Thankyou so very much Josh! This is really very nice of you.

I am just writing a list of questions to put on it. When it is done, I will PM it to you. Perhaps you could PM me an idea as to how many questions you want (max limit, etc.) and what sort of questions you want asked. Thanks!

[TheWizard]

I guess to me I'm only interested in helping people so the questions should be to find out if there are enough people with it to make a difference.

Its not about being popular to me. Its about should we do it because it helps people.

[billie]

Do you only want to find out how many people are sufferers from Social Anxiety Disorder or do you want more of a complete demographic report of the viewers of the board, i.e. you could see if a large proportion of them have drug problems, or school problems, or whatever. Also, you would be able to see how much audience penetration the boards have - what sorts of people the board has reached.

[TheWizard]

That sounds cool. I didn't know it could tell all that stuff. :)

[Shaolin]

Yeah a large survey would be cool, but you can do that really easily with a poll.

[billie]

But surveys can have multiple questions, and also allow you to have more complex answers, like multiple choice, ratings (1-10), arrays of choices, number inputs (for age), etc. And you can also see cross-question links, e.g. 10% of people who are dyslexic suffer from depression. It just allows for more flexible data collection.

[TheWizard]

I think you are right. good survey could tell us alot about the people who come here and maybe we can make VT better. :)

[RunAwayMolly]

I think it would be a better idea if we made a forum for all anxieties similar to social anxiety because that is just a part of one big problem. I mean there are many different types of anxieties, social, agoraphobia and other phobias and fear of leaving ones house the fear of going to school (which i batteled) and more kinds.

[TheWizard]

I guess the next step is to come up with the questions and anwsers to make it multichoice.

:)