[Tauren]

If you see a member is having a serious crisis is there anything that can be done but the administrators, like calling a hospital in their area or something?

[lizardlady]

There is little anyone here can do if a person is in crisis. That's why there are disclaimers around the site tell people who to call if they are in crisis. Unless a member discloses their location there's no way for anyone here to know their exact location. I believe (and could be wrong) that admins can determine a member's IP address, but that's not specific.

[DocJohn]

Your best bet to help someone in crisis in the community is to encourage them to reach out to a local hotline in whatever geographical region they're in (remembering that some folks are not in the U.S.). With your encouragement and support, that may be enough to get them to get more immediate help from folks who are trained to help them with their crisis.

We are not a crisis service, so we do not offer those kinds of help ourselves.

Best,
DocJohn

[lizardlady]

Thanks Doc John. You said what I meant to but didn't.

[-jimi-]

I think any member as a person is free to do what they like if the other person gave them info on who they are. I think that is a personal matter that cannot be regulated by rules.

But if the person is anonymous, I think it would be against what this site stands for if the site tracked that person down. If that ever happened I'd leave fast as I could.

[tradika]

<- Tauren Shaman 4 life

[Artchic528]

Originally Posted by tradika

<- Tauren Shaman 4 life

Pardon? What exactly are you trying to say?

[amandalouise]

Originally Posted by tradika

<- Tauren Shaman 4 life

Im confused by this statement too....

isnt shaman 4 life a forum board for world of warcraft...wondering how this pertains to how to help someone who is in crisis here on psych central?

[tradika]

Look at the persons name. This is my way of welcoming him. He also had his question answered.

Originally Posted by tradika

<- Tauren Shaman 4 life

Pshh undead shadow priest is where it's at haha

But on a serious note, all any admin of this site could do is use a person's IP address to find a user's general geographic location, however, even that method only gives an approximate location (usually a 50 mile radius) of that person. Unless you go through somebody's ISP (internet service provider), or do some black hat hacking, you're not going to get an exact physical address of anybody on this site. If a user uses a VPN or SOCKS5 proxy service, it becomes even more difficult to track somebody because they can use these services to appear to be anywhere in the world and nobody could prove otherwise without hacking into the SOCKS5 or VPN services (if they even keep logs that is).

So yeah, direct the person in a crisis to a hot line or call the police if you think they're in immediate danger.

[Artchic528]

Oh. Its a WoW reference. I never played that game so I didn't know.

Thank you for this post, I think that we can all do our part to reach out to someone in out community to help them out in crisis. With words of hope or encouragement. Or by directing them to where they need to be looking for the exact help they are looking for. Peer support can often be the best support we have.