In our weekly Peer Group Chats, you can chat in real-time with others living with complex mental health issues as well as family, friends and carers. Peer Group Chats are free to attend.
Peer Group Chats focus on a specific topic and are guided by peer workers with lived experience of mental health issues. Counsellors are in the background to make sure chats are as safe as possible for participants.
Participate in our Peer Group Chat
Chats take place in the chat box below or for mobiles by clicking the blue speech bubble at the bottom right of your screen. You can only join the chat when it's on, at the specified times above.
To join and comment follow these steps:
- Sign up with a username, email, and password.
- Enter the verification code sent to your email address.
- That’s it! You can start commenting.
To follow the chat but not comment, simply click 'Enter as a guest' and create a username only.
Chats are anonymous, so make sure your username does not identify you in real life.
Open Peer Group Chat in new window
For any questions about how the chat works including technology issues please check out our Peer Group Chat: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
Important: group chats are peer spaces, so if you need one-to-one support please reach out to our counselling support team. In the case that you are at risk we will direct you to crisis services. If there is immediate risk we will work with you to reach out to emergency services.
Read previous Peer Group Chats
You can view the transcripts from past chats. They are full of great information, discussion, and suggestions from others.
READ CHATS
Group guidelines
Our guidelines are essential to creating a safe online peer space. These guidelines will be reviewed and updated with feedback from group participants. We encourage you to read the guidelines before joining a chat so that you can participate knowing your responsibilities to other group participants and exactly how we create a safe environment for everyone.
Please note that our peer group chat is only available for participants within Australia.
Our guidelines prioritise the following principles, which apply to a participant’s username and comments:
Safety
As language can be triggering or elicit a trauma response, out of respect for people with a lived experience, please do not publish content that contains graphic or specific details, or any descriptive account, of:
- your or anyone else's medication or dosages
- eating disorder behaviours (recommending diets, descriptive weight loss/gain strategies or any numbers relating to weight, BMI, clothing size, calories or exercise)
- self-harm methods
- suicide methods
- sexual or physical abuse
- or any other content that others may find distressing or harmful in any way
Respect
Others may hold and share cultural values, beliefs, practices and/or opinions different from yours. To ensure the online groups remain a safe and supportive environment, please respect people’s boundaries, beliefs and ideas. Please do not publish any content that:
- is obscene or offensive
- is malicious, personally attacking or hostile
- directly talking about or alluding to another participant or Peer Support Worker that could be perceived as disrespectful or not inclusive
- may incite hatred, racist, sexist, homophobic, abusive or be seen as discriminatory
- is critical of other’s beliefs and values or is pressuring others to follow your beliefs and values.
- could be seen to be serving yours or somebody else's commercial interests
- could be interpreted as professional advice such as legal, medical, or financial advice
- impacts others from contributing e.g. over-commenting or spam
- reputational risk to SANE
Anonymity
The online groups remain anonymous to enable participants to share their experiences without concern of being identified. In consideration of this, please do not publish:
- your name
- your addresses - postal or email
- your member names on other social media services
- the name of your workplace, uni or school
- any other information by which you could be identified in real life
- you may wish to think about the username you are using and the considerations of using the same username in other SANE support offerings or external services
Confidentiality
You can read our privacy policy here, for more on what information SANE collects and what we do and don’t do with it. We are bound by and adhere to the requirements of the Health Records Act and Privacy Legislation.
This confidentiality is not to be breached to outside individuals or organisations. The only exception to this is in the case of risk of harm issues where SANE has a legal obligation to share relevant documentation with emergency services or child protection services.
In the instance that any comment in the group discussion breaches the ‘Group Guidelines’, the comment will be removed and the participant will be notified via private message immediately. On the third breach, the participant will be removed from the online peer group for 15 minutes. Upon their return, if a breach occurs, the participant will be removed for the remainder of the group session.
"It was a joy to participate last night and it was interesting and inspiring to hear how others had coped... and promoted self-care for themselves"
"The peer group was really great, and I hope it can be a regular thing!"
