Hey folks, thanks for the feedback and ideas about the chat rooms.

I will emphasize this again, as some members apparently have a mistaken belief about an unwritten rule or something:

All chat rooms are opened to everyone in need, at any time. Except the teen and 21+ rooms, the other rooms have no exceptions.

That means that, contrary to what others have said in this thread, if you see 2 people in the Support Room, you are welcomed to join them. The Support Chat room is not meant as a private room for 2 people!

There is the simple-to-use capability in this chat system for anyone to create a private chat room if one is needed. If you need to chat in private, please use this feature of the chat system. Do not use the Support Room if you want to chat in private with one other individual, as that is not its intended purpose.

As for therapists on-call, we'd love to offer that as a feature in the future if we could afford to do so. Therapists are specialized and trained professionals and I expect that we could readily use one here 24/7. But because of their specialized training, they are also expensive and far beyond what I can afford at this time (for a free community!).

As for people being overwhelmed in a specific chat room, I have to say that this is up to you, as an individual member, to help manage when you're in chat. You can't have 10 people in Support all looking for support -- some people need to give while others get. If you're here and you can give, please do consider doing so in chat. But if you can't give, and see lots of other needy people in Support, consider not adding to the burden if you can do so. A self-help support community is meant to be just that -- self-help. This only works when people give as much as they get. Not all at the same time, obviously, but eventually.

Best,
DocJohn