Mental Health Foundation social media moderation policy

 Last reviewed: 4 May 2022

Welcome to the MHF Social Media Community 

The Mental Health Foundation’s social media community is a safe, friendly and kind space where you can discuss mental health topics, talk about your own lived experience and share the different ways in which you look after their mental health.

The social media community includes: 

Our social media community is not a mental health support service. 

The Mental Health Foundation is a charity specialising in research and policy development, with a focus on preventing mental health problems. We are not able to advise directly on personal circumstances. We will instead direct you to organisations that can. 

Mental Health Foundation Social Media Community Code of Conduct

Summary 

Comments, debate and different perspectives are welcome and encouraged. We want you to feel like you can discuss personal experiences in a safe, respectful environment on our social media channels. 

We moderate our social media channels to ensure that our social media communities stay safe. 

Full

Respect others:

Please be polite to anyone who comments on our social media channels.

We would encourage you to act with empathy and kindness when someone comments online and shares stories about their mental health. To remember that there is a real person behind the comment, and that they may be impacted by negative or judgmental comments.

Safe space:

We believe passionately that the Mental Health Foundation social media community should be a safe and welcoming space for all individuals, groups and their ideas. As such, any rudeness, insults, hate, hostility, or negativity may be removed, and you may lose your ability to comment.

Moderation and availability

To provide a safe space online which functions in line with our values we moderate our channels Monday to Friday 8am to 9pm and Saturday to Sunday (GMT) 10am to 8pm.

When we are not moderating, we will provide information about services that are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to ensure our social media communities have somewhere to turn to when they need someone to talk to.

Moderating is not about censoring your views. The aim is to ensure that comments relate to the subject being discussed and our social media communities remain safe. Moderation will not be used to suppress legitimate, reasoned discussion. 

Constructive criticism and complaints

We will acknowledge your opinion or complaint, encourage you to email  [email protected] , and then investigate the issue to see if there’s anything we can do to help.

Commenting guidelines

What to do

  • Be respectful to one another, 
  • Be kind to each other, 
  • Stay on topic. 

What not to do

  • Use hate speech - do not attack other users based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition. 
  • Post comments that are abusive, vulgar, obscene, racist, threatening, contain profanity or are harassing.
  • Post comments that are libel, slander, or personal attacks of any kind, including the use of offensive terms that target specific individuals or groups. 
  • Post content that contains graphic violence or pornography. 
  • Suggest or encourage illegal, dangerous, or destructive activity. 
  • Make unsupported accusations.
  • Comment about political campaigning or lobbying
  • Post spam - anything that is solely promotional, that links to a malicious website, or that is clearly irrelevant to the post at hand constitutes spam. 
  • Post personal information in comments such as addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses or other online contact details, which may relate to you, or other individuals. 
  • Write comments that are clearly off topic. 
  • Use social media for customer support questions – email  [email protected]  instead. 
  • Post duplicate posts 

Moderation around suicide and self-harm

If you comment about suicide or self-harm on our social media channels, we will direct you to organisations who can support you and urge you to reach out for support. Our main priority is that you feel seen, heard and supported. 

If you post extremely triggering content, we will need to hide or delete this comment to keep our social media communities safe. We will then Direct Message you to suggest organisations that can support you and urge you to reach out for support. We may need to call the emergency services if we feel you or someone around you is in immediate danger.

Extremely triggering content related to suicide is any mention of suicide methods, mention of ‘suicide hotspots’ or rise in suicides for a particular group or location. Any text or a photo of a suicide note. Any mentions of methods being quick, easy, painless and more. And any comments which include a lot of detail around the context.

Extremely triggering content related to self-harm is any mention of blood, any mention of the method of self-harming or graphic description of the wound. 

We moderate suicide and self-harm comments in line with Samaritans’ Media Guidelines and guidelines for covering self-harm in the media. 

We will update our policies as and when is needed:

As our charity and online social media community evolves, we will update our moderation policy and ways in which we engage with you. 

Social media functions – what they represent 

Retweets / Reposts (RTs)

Tweets / Facebook / Instagram posts we repost (RT) do not imply endorsement on the part of the Mental Health Foundation. We may retweet news, links and personal observations we believe are relevant to the work we do. 

Importantly, our decision to RT should not be taken as explicit endorsement of any position or argument that may vary from the Mental Health Foundations’ current official position, nor should it be taken as an indication of a possible shift in the current official position. 

Following

Mental Health Foundation’s decision to follow a specific social media user does not imply endorsement of any kind. We follow accounts on social media we believe are relevant to our work. This could include following the social media accounts of celebrities, politicians, companies and other commercial enterprises (and/or their employees) who comment on mental health related issues. 

Comments and @Replies

With comments and @replies sent to us, when possible, we will respond to them. Please note that, due to the volume of traffic on our social media channels, it is not always possible to respond, and we encourage you to use other ways to contact us if your questions or comments require urgent attention. 

Direct Messages

We do not monitor or respond to direct messages, and where it is possible, we will turn this function off on our social media channels. If you have any queries, we encourage you to contact us by emailing  [email protected] . 

Complaints, Media Requests and Personal Issues

We encourage you to follow traditional channels to make a media request, freedom of information (FOI) request or complaint. See details of other ways to contact us. 

Mental Health Foundation Staff social media activity 

Some Mental Health Foundation staff tweet and post on social media under their own names or pseudonyms. Despite their professional affiliation with the Mental Health Foundation, their social media activity does not represent the official position of the charity and should be considered the product of each individual as a private citizen. 

At times, people who are not associated with the Mental Health Foundation list us as their workplace, or include us in their profiles without permission. Unfortunately, there is often nothing we can do to get them to move the association in these circumstances.