Registration Agreement

You agree, through your use of this forum, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any International or United States Federal law. You also agree not to post any copyrighted material unless you own the copyright or you have written consent from the owner of the copyrighted material. Spam, flooding, advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and solicitations are also forbidden on this forum.

Note that it is impossible for the staff or the owners of this forum to confirm the validity of posts. Please remember that we do not actively monitor the posted messages, and as such, are not responsible for the content contained within. We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information presented. The posted messages express the views of the author, and not necessarily the views of this forum, its staff, its subsidiaries, or this forum's owner. Anyone who feels that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to notify an administrator or moderator of this forum immediately. The staff and the owner of this forum reserve the right to remove objectionable content, within a reasonable time frame, if they determine that removal is necessary. This is a manual process, however, please realize that they may not be able to remove or edit particular messages immediately. This policy applies to member profile information as well.

You remain solely responsible for the content of your posted messages. Furthermore, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless the owners of this forum, any related websites to this forum, its staff, and its subsidiaries. The owners of this forum also reserve the right to reveal your identity (or any other related information collected on this service) in the event of a formal complaint or legal action arising from any situation caused by your use of this forum.

You have the ability, as you register, to choose your username. We advise that you keep the name appropriate. With this user account you are about to register, you agree to never give your password out to another person except an administrator, for your protection and for validity reasons. You also agree to NEVER use another person's account for any reason.  We also HIGHLY recommend you use a complex and unique password for your account, to prevent account theft.

After you register and login to this forum, you will be able to fill out a detailed profile. It is your responsibility to present clean and accurate information. Any information the forum owner or staff determines to be inaccurate or vulgar in nature will be removed, with or without prior notice. Appropriate sanctions may be applicable.

Please note that with each post, your IP address is recorded, in the event that you need to be banned from this forum or your ISP contacted. This will only happen in the event of a major violation of this agreement.

Also note that the software places a cookie, a text file containing bits of information (such as your username and password), in your browser's cache. This is ONLY used to keep you logged in/out. The software does not collect or send any other form of information to your computer.

Privacy Policy

Depression Forums Privacy Policy

Depression Forums is committed to protecting your privacy. This statement details what that means in practice, however you are involved with SANE. As we develop as an organization, we may need to alter our privacy statement. If you have any questions about this statement, please email admin@depressionforums.co.uk.

Depression Forums: who we are and what we do

Depression Forums is an online forum working to help people affected by mental illness by sharing experiences and suggesting ways to help such as MIND and going to their GPs.  We can offer support but cannot give medical support or prescribe medication.  If a member is suicidal we will do our utmost to ensure they get the appropriate qualified medical and/or emotional support.  Depression Forums has three main objectives:

    To raise awareness and combat stigma about mental illness.
    To provide support for people with mental health problems, their families and carers as well as giving information for other organisations.
    To allow student researchers to post surveys into the causes and treatments of serious mental illness such as schizophrenia and depression and the psychological and social impact of mental illness.

Using Depression Forums

We provide emotional support, guidance, and information to anyone affected by mental illness, including families, friends, and carers.

Using Depression Forums is confidential, and we are committed to your privacy.

Community

Any information that you provide us with when registering for our online community is stored within our website and kept for as long as you are an active member.

We will only use the information you provide when you join the online community if:

    You are acting in breach of the communities’ ground rules.
    We are significantly concerned about you or your wellbeing.
    You have given us permission to contact you regarding Depression Forums and our activities.

Content of posts made on our online community is publicly visible although there is a private area. SANE will never share your personal details with external agencies except when we are required to do so in accordance with the law and/or we contact the emergency services.

If you donate via our website, the data is stored on a secure server. Information shared with us is securely protected and kept up to date.

If you donate to Depression Forums or become a member of our online community, we may ask you if we can stay in touch,

Telephone: If you have given us your telephone number, we will only telephone you if we are concerned for you unless you have told us that you prefer not to be contacted in this way.

Email and text: If we are contacting you by email or text, we will tell you how you can opt-out of further communications and make it easy for you to do so.
 
We do not share or sell personal information to third parties for marketing purposes.

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as it is necessary while you are a member.

- Keeping your information up-to-date.

Your rights

It is important that you understand your legal rights around your personal data and how we may use it. If you would like to discuss or exercise any of these rights, please do get in touch via admin@depressionforums.co.uk

- Right to be informed.

This privacy policy ensures that you are informed about how we will process your personal data. You might also see messages on some of our forms (or otherwise when we collect personal data from you) that explain why we ask for specific pieces of information from you.

- Right of access.

You have the right to access a copy of your personal data and receive certain information about what the data is and how and why we are processing it. Please note that we will require you to prove your identity before we disclose any information. You will need to allow ten working days and a £10 charge to process this.

- Right to rectification.

If you feel that any of the information that we hold about you is incorrect, do let us know so that we can look into it.

- Right to object

You have the right to object to the processing of your data. If you wish to complain, we would ask that you do this in line with our complaints policy.

- Right to erasure/to be forgotten.

You have the right to request that we delete your information and can discuss this with us at any time.

You should know that there are some circumstances where we may need to keep your details, for example, if it is necessary to comply with a legal obligation on us. If this situation occurs, then we will explain and discuss these circumstances with you.

- Right to restrict processing.

You can request that we restrict processing of your data, as an alternative to deleting it this means that we will keep the data but stop processing for most purposes. You may want to exercise this right if you feel that the data is inaccurate, that our processing of it is unlawful, whilst we progress a request from you to object to processing, or if we have no further need of the data, but you require us to keep it in relation to the establishment, exercise or defence of a legal claim.

- Rights related to automated decision making.

You have rights to avoid being subject to decisions based solely on automated processing (including profiling) which has a significant effect on you. At Depression Forums we do not carry out any such processing.

- Right to data portability.

You have the right to request a copy of certain personal data to have it transferred to another organisation in certain circumstances.

You should know that there are some circumstances where these rights may not apply, but where this is the case we will always explain this to you. Please do contact us if you have any questions or concerns on how we collect and use your personal data, or on your rights, as we are always happy to speak to you. You also have the right to make a complaint direct to the UK's data protection authority, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The ICO can be contacted here and concerns can be also logged via the ICO website.

For more information on making a subject access request, please visit here.

Making a complaint

We are totally committed to providing a safe community. In this context, we very much welcome your views feedback, compliments and comments. If you are not completely happy, please let us know.

Policy changes

We are committed to improving the services we offer. As such, from time to time we may need to amend our policy without prior notice to you. Any substantial changes, however, will be explained on our website.

We ask that you check our policy regularly to keep updated on our latest terms. This does not affect your statutory rights under UK law.