Welcome Back (to Me)!

Hey Forums Folk,

It's nice to be back. I've been away from the forums for about 3 weeks now and I've sure missed you all.

As promised, I said I'd give you all a perhaps shortened version of my voyage to the US. As you know, I've got nagging kids living next door to me, so I had to give them a visual representation of my trip which I'll also share here (no, you aren't the 'nagging kids' I'm referring to):

I could not share too much before the trip as this was a work/study trip. I had the amazing opportunity to meet and connect with hundreds of professionals from all over the world during an international conference in Florida - people from the US, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia etc all met to celebrate and share their experiences of both providing and receiving psycho-social support. (When I say 'psycho-social support', I'm referring to supports that sit outside clinical support.)

And guess what?!

You are all FAMOUS!

I was able to showcase this amazing Forums Recovery Community at SANE and talk about all the amazing work you do in supporting each other in a recovery-oriented way.

I took snapshots of threads and posts as well as some of the most powerful examples of how much this forums community means in peoples' mental health recovery.

With 700+ people at this international conference, they were awestruck to hear that such a community exists. It was so difficult for them to comprehend that an anonymous and fully-digital recovery community could actually make such a profound impact on the lives of those struggling with mental health challenges, or for those caring for someone with mental health challenges.

The idea of having Community Guides and Peer Guides on the forums also sparked immense interest. They wanted to know more and more about what we do and how we do it. The very concept of supporting members digitally to volunteer on the forums and/or into the workforce is totally foreign territory to them. Yet it proved that with a sprinkle of creativity, digital innovations are 'limitless' (this was the precise term someone used after seeing the forums).

From what I've seen overseas, their current idea of digital mental health psycho-social support is having a Zoom call running while they are in a meeting or completing work. Others may use a chat platform to communicate to each other via text.

By sharing what we do here on SANE Forums, the questions kept pouring in and they wanted to 'see it' in action.

They also loved the birthday celebrations we have on the forums, the virtual cruise, live chats, virtual walk around Australia etc.

You should all be so proud of yourselves 🙂

Feel free to ask any questions (keeping anonymity in mind)

@RachSANECEO @ElephantEar3 @Jynx @AuntGlow @rav3n @Ru-bee @0ddsidian

Special note and thanks: And thank you SANE for making this happen! There was a tremendous amount of planning and organisation SANE-wide by some very talented people; and all of this happened within the space of a few weeks!