Depression Forums

I joined a year ago after having reviewed several similar sites. I have found members to be very supportive. People share ideas and experiences. Moreover, it's a place for something we all need - to know we're not alone. Members also share their successes, no matter how small. The staff does monitor the postings on the site to create a safe space, which I consider great benefit, especially considering how vulnerable people using such sites can be.

I've been part of this forum for several years and am stunned at the negative reviews here as I have experienced it as a fair, positive space.
No forum/ setting works for everyone and I guess giving exaggerated negative reviews can be a form of venting about personal disappointment.
Check out the forum and see for yourself if it's a community that will provide you with good depression support.

I'm surprised by the negative reviews cos i've been to this site for a decade and they are very supportive people. Sure the mods had irritated me a few times but as a person with mental illness i always find only myself to blame and i really had no one else in real life and i always end up coming back here and they took me back with warm open arms. Rules and rules, get over the fact that some rules are there for a reason. The people here are very nice and helpful.

Giving this site two stars because, while the folks here are very supportive, the general environment is not conducive to any sort of healing. After reading through many posts for a number of years, it's apparent people are there only to vent and not to get better. I have been on numerous sites and most hold people accountable for their actions (or lack thereof). Most also provide some sort of stability so that, if someone is dealing with a serious issue, they have access to the very best information and the site members adhere to strict guidelines. As an example, a member of this site posted, over several months, about his intent to kill himself, providing a date he intended to be gone. The members responding to him over time, in most circumstances, provided encouragement and suggestions to help him make arrangements. This person killed himself. This was reported to 2 separate admins/mods and they gave no more than a shrug. Please don't visit here if you are feeling bad.

The owner and main administrator of this site, Lindsay, is absolutely bat$#*! crazy. I've been on different internet forums over the years (both mental health related and others), and I've never seen anything like it. It's a heavy-handed dictatorship. She's got some major issues. She's clearly on a power trip. There are so many rules that you can't even keep track of them all. And if you fall out of line, you are punished without explanation. Your account will be suspended, and if you're not completely deferential to Lindsay, you'll get an IP ban with no explanation. It's no wonder that they only get a few posts a day. Good luck with your approach Lindsay. You are toxic.

This place is rampant with abuse, from the site owner, to the members to a few of the site moderators. I had a very bad experience on this site and will NOT be returning. I got in trouble for reacting to someone else's extremely rude and harsh comments towards me by a heavy handed moderator, while that person skated away scott free. This particular moderator seems to change her mind frequently and cannot decide how she wants to be. I've seen her initially support a member who is getting abused, then punish that same member for not letting the conversation die, clearly being upset about it. I had been a member a while there, and experienced toxicity from many members. It made my mental health worse, not better. They also seem to ban members they simply don't like. Unfair treatment. They make up TOS that are not even written.

This forum is nothing but one big advertisement. I was a member there for a number of years, and there are/were some wonderful people there, many of whom helped me through some rough times. But over time, the place became deluged with ads. I shouldn't have to be coerced into donating with the the promise of an ad-free site. I post on many sites that are ad free and donating is strictly voluntary. One of them is a mental health/suicide prevention forum.

Mental health support shouldn't be a commodity and running such a site as a 'for profit' business is just wrong.

The draconian moderation and ridiculous censorship just adds insult to injury..

The site owner, Lindsay, is an abusive and unstable person. Sometimes it sounds like her sense of reality is pretty distorted, hence she definitely shouldn't be an admin on a mental health peer support forum. Misogyny is rampant on these boards, yet members asking for e.g. name change get scolded. The atmosphere was better some years ago, when there were a few sensible mods around who actually cared for the people of the community. Nowadays this site is a hellhole and I'd never recommend it to anyone suffering from a mental illness.

Beware. The top admin administrator of this site, Lindsay, is a mental psycho case who should NOT be running a site for mental health support. She clearly does not understand nor follow the simple and basic rules of mental health services herself: compassion, understanding, and support. She is abusive towards members for minor incidents, she far overreacts in situations of conflict, is not objective, and is not supportive when someone is clearly in serious need of mental health support. She clearly has some serious mental health issues herself that interfere with her ability to remain objective and compassionate towards members. She should not be running this site! I give one star because the members themselves are for the most part truly wonderful, along with the website moderators, but the site owner should not be in mental health services, so beware!

If you run into issues or need help, the TOS claims that you can report to them, but you are actually ignored. There is also no "delete account" button or any way to deactivate your account on DepressionForums without reporting it to an admin, and good luck with that if you do, because they don't reply to reports, and they provide no help whatsoever. You can't edit posts or delete them, you can't change your username either - you have to ask an admin or moderator to do that for you, and again - they will not get back to you. I have been waiting for over a year for them to get back to me and they still have not. Save yourself the trouble and find a different forum.

This skte is great in the setup, much of the content, many of the members of the community there and what you can do. However, the site has been around for a decade or more, a lot of the material that has been posted in that time has not been organized or edited. Just about any information you might be looking for is hard to find. Users can be quite informative, supportive, uplifting and sympathetic. However, the people who run the site ARE irrational and verbally abusive. The volunteer moderators are not getting paid and are essentially her "hench men." They are quite heavy-handed on the site and abuse their power frequently. While most of the users are pretty nice, some can be quite manipulative and malicious. I ultimately found that my mental health was better off by not spending time on the site. It's a pretty unfortunate thing. Hope this is helpful.

I posted something on that anhedonia subforum last year. It was horrible. People there said anhedonia is not a part of depression because depressed people can still happy. That is so wrong. And some people often talk bad things about their own therapists because they think their therapists are stupid and the people on those forum are mental health experts.

Lack of supportive people on that relatively small forum, and the forum mods are not active there either. Don't trust that site, guys. There are lots of better support forums on the internet.

I go to 7cups.com now, they're way much better. Lots of supportive people who are willing to listen. This is not a promotion, by the way. It's up to you whether you want to check it or not.

I was a member for several uneventful weeks. That was until I posted a question about why there is no discussion on a relevant topic. A couple of persons posted that discussions about depressionforums itself was not allowed. Fine. I posted something to the effect that that is stupid, I am done, delete my account. I sent a message to the administrators to delete my account. I thought it was all over. I was in for a surprise.

I received multiple page long abusive emails from the owner of the website going into great detail about why I am the world's worst person. As a sign of peevish childishness he told me he was refusing to delete my account he will ban me instead. Fine. I thought it was all over.

After I was banned I have still received long abusive emails detailing how awful I am. I have told him to leave me alone, never contact me again and stop the harassment. He has refused.

If you have depression that last thing you should do is go to this website run by bizarre abusive persons.