03/03/2010 - Study

HI All,
I am Levita and I am a final year doctoral student from Latrobe UniversityAustralia and am writing a thesis in the area of self-harm. I am particularly interested in the experiences of individuals who self-harm and use online support sites to help them cope with their self-harm. Self-harm is a very personal issue for me. This has been my area of research, solely because from my experience I feel that people who self-harm are not understood by ‘professionals’ and hence seeks support from each other. Through my research I hope to give a 'voice' to such individuals to express their feelings and empower and support others through their journey of recovery.

I would really appreciate any response. IF my study sounds like something you want to be a part of please check out these links:

http://self-injury.net/sites/default/files/lconsentform.doc Read more »

Wed, 2010-03-03 12:01 — Gabrielle

03/01/2010 - Self-Injury Awareness Day

Today is Self-Injury Awareness Day. 

Awareness has come a long way over the past decade even though a number of people remain ignorant on the reasons and who instead of the fact that it exists. DSM V potentially will have Non-Suicidal Self-Injury amongst its pages and what has only been a footnote for Borderline Personality Disorder may very well become a diagnosis. While I have my reservations about NSSI I feel it is a step forward. It still is a behavior and doesn't have to be a lifelong issue but psychiatrists won't feel the need to shove me or you into the Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis as first choice. 

Some of you just started today and some of you have been self-injuring for over thirty years. Some of us fit the stereotype, profiles that researchers have created. A good amount more do not.

What it comes down to is that we are individuals. 

 

Have a good day today whether or not you are attempting to spread awareness and clear up misinformation or are living this day as one would any other.

  Read more »

Mon, 2010-03-01 04:14 — Gabrielle

02/08/2010 - Organization, User list, More stuff you can add, etc.

 

There are new types of content you can add. First off there is For Self-Injurers - In Their Own Words where members or anonymous users can add their own answer to a question about self-injury. There is Creativity - Article/Essay for articles/essays members perhaps wrote for class, the school newspaper, what have you. Members and anonymous users can also add published poems and published short stories to Popular Culture & Media. However, if you're just trying to share a poem you wrote create an account and you can add your own works to the Creativity section.

The User list has been revamped for logged in users to show basic information about users and a link to their contact/PM page. To the side to this are upcoming user birthdays, who's new, and a list of your user relationships (e.g. friends). Read more »

Mon, 2010-02-08 22:10 — Gabrielle

01/30/2009 - User Profiles & Blogs Changed

With some tweaking and the use of a nice module profiles have been changed to include your activity stream, your statuses, your friends, last topics posted by you, last comments posted by you, a comment wall, last visitors, etc.

 

Also, the main blogs area has changed to include a list of top bloggers, a list of all bloggers, the latest blog entries, and a tag cloud.

For users' blog your latest blogs are displayed, as are the latest comments on your blog, then at the bottom a tag cloud for each user.

If you have any ideas on other 'fixes' let me know. What else do you want to see in the blogs? In the profiles? Elsewhere?

Sat, 2010-01-30 15:44 — Gabrielle

01/23/2010 - Registration/Request Password Form/etc. Captcha Issue, Adding New Content Errors Fixed, and New Editor

There was an issue with the CAPTCHA's for anonymous users and people attempting to register or request a password. They should now be working properly. If not e-mail me at gabrielle@self-injury.net .

 

Also, in the past day or so adding new content worked but had an ugly bunch of red error text a the top. That is fixed now and forms should appear normally.

Registered users should now be able to use more advanced HTML and also post images from self-injury.net in the form. They need to click 'Input Format' and choose 'More Advanced HTML'.

Sat, 2010-01-23 05:48 — Gabrielle

01/04/2009 - New Editor, Artwork changed into a gallery, Notifications, Image Uploads, etc.

I've added in a new editor and some of the different features it has are: smilies, ability to link images from self-injury.net (you can upload images into your user directory!), ability to choose special characters to insert, etc.

 

Artwork has ditched the tables-like display and has been revamped to display three images per row and much larger. Each image will popup the larger original image (if needed) if you have javascript on. Information about the image is displayed below it with a link to each individual page so that you can comment if you so choose.

You can now choose to be notified about comments on your comment, comments on the page you commented on. You can also choose to be notified about new content from a certain member, from a certain type of content, from a taxonomy (taxonomy can be tags or, for example, a certain band under Songs), etc. You can be notified through e-mail, personal message or comment. Read more »

Mon, 2010-01-04 20:39 — Gabrielle

12/31/2009 - Comments Fixed

A module I added disabled comments for all users but me. I have disabled that module so everybody should be able to comment again. Please let me know if there are any other issues. Thanks!

Thu, 2009-12-31 23:33 — Gabrielle

12/29/2009 - Password Issues?

I fixed a bug that would change your password if you updated your profile and make you unable to login after logging out. Sorry about that.

Tue, 2009-12-29 06:40 — Gabrielle

12/27/2009 - Groups, User locations (Membermap), Twitter, etc.

Several new features have been added for registered members. It's a work in progress so please report any issues you are having.

You can now create groups that other members can join around topics, things you have in common. I know there's Safe Haven, the main message board, but I know some people may be uncomfortable posting there because it's so big and a lot of the members there are established. Here's where you can connect with smaller groups of people if you so choose. Each group is supposed to have it's own forum. So, say you create a group around people who have been abused or have a certain mental illnesses (be careful with the ED talk, though, that's pretty hard to know where to moderate) or go to high school, you can have a little forum for that group, a place to talk, share blog entries, poetry, etc. You can create your own member titles, the group can be private or public. Maybe this won't take off but I'd like to give people a better chance to talk and connect if they don't feel comfortable on the main forum.

Another new feature is that you can now connect your Twitter account to your user account here and have your statuses cross-post. Read more »

Sun, 2009-12-27 20:39 — Gabrielle