Sign Up

Information about the Message Board,
your privacy & the Message Board Rules

Important message about signing up to use the board.

We MUST have a genuine and current e-mail address to complete the signup process. Most problems that people have signing up to use the board are because of spelling mistakes in their e-mail address. Please check your e-mail address very carefully when you sign up.

About the Message Board

The message board is administrated by the message board team. We are available to post messages on Mondays – Fridays 4.30pm – 8.30pm and Saturdays 13.00pm – 16.30pm. Messages will not be posted on Sundays, Bank Holidays and other Public Holidays.

Please remember the Message Board team is only human. We may post messages in error or there may be technical problems that are out of our control. We ask all Message Board Users to be patient; we always try and resolve problems as quickly as possible.

Keeping Safe on the Message Board

We want to ensure that everyone who uses this message board is kept safe from harm, exploitation or abuse. We know that the vast majority of you will use the Board to give and receive support from other people like yourselves. However, there may be people who visit this site to try and gain information about users for their own purposes. We want to protect you from abuse and exploitation. That is why we will not publish your e-mail address or any other information that may identify you to other users.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that it won’t only be your friends on the Board that will be reading your message but lots of other people. So remember, if you wouldn’t want a complete stranger to know some information about you, then don’t post it.

This is why we will edit messages and remove information that we think may identify you to others (even people you feel you have got to know really well on the Board). We don’t want someone in your home town, at your college or workplace to find out something about you that you wouldn't want them to know.

Please be considerate when you write about other people. When you are writing about experiences that involve, family, friends or other people who come into contact with you, please consider carefully how what you write and post on the board will impact on them before posting your message. Consider how you will identify them (we will edit out names and initials) to keep them and you anonymous.

We also want to ensure that you look after yourselves and each other when you use the Message Board. We know you won’t want to read stuff about you or other users of the Board that is nasty, critical or unsupportive. Therefore, we won’t allow arguments between individual message boarders, bullying or harassment. We also know that you don’t want to read messages that are offensive, racist, homophobic or insulting to people with disabilities, so we won’t post them.

We understand that some of you may want to explore very difficult thoughts and emotions. However, we will not post any messages that are overtly suicidal in tone or contains graphic descriptions of self-harm. When people do send us messages like that, we always e-mail them and offer them relevant support, we will also take action if we believe that a message board user is at risk of significant harm.

beat is an organisation that promotes recovery. We know that most of the users of the Board are looking for help and support so we will not post any messages that encourage weight loss, purging, abuse of medication etc. We also won’t post messages that are critical of individuals or health professionals, specific treatments, services or Treatment Units because we don’t want others to be put off from getting the help they need.

We really appreciate your honesty and the way you support each other on the Board. We hope that we have made this a safe place for you to explore difficult thoughts and feelings and develop friendships with people who know exactly what you are going through.

We have written a comprehensive set of rules which will tell you what you can and can’t post on the Board. This is our way of ensuring that the Board remains a space where you will be safe from exploitation but where you can find friendship and support.

The Message Board Rules

• All postings on this board are anonymous. This means that we will not post any messages that include e-mail addresses, telephone numbers or information that will allow others to identify you: such as addresses, work-place names, school/college/university names etc. We will allow major towns and cities; anything more specific will be deleted.

• Information about other websites, specific URL's (web site addresses) will be deleted. If you know a web site relevant to the discussion topic, please recommend it by e-mail to media@b-eat.co.uk if it’s not already listed on our links page.

• Contributions should be respectful to other users, tasteful and relevant.

• Nothing unlawful or proposing any illegal activities will be posted on the Board. This includes referring to or suggesting buying drugs privately or over the internet.

• Your messages must not be harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or otherwise objectionable.

• Messages which encourage people to gain or lose weight are not acceptable (reference to specific weight or weight loss including calorie intake is not helpful or useful).

• Messages which reward or commend weight gain or loss are not acceptable.

• Messages that encourage resistance to treatment are not acceptable.

• Messages that include graphic images of self-harm or give descriptions of behaviour that others might find distressing or disturbing will not be posted.

• Messages must not mention any specific drugs by name, however it is ok to talk in terms of ‘being on antidepressants’.

• Messages that give diagnoses or medical and treatment advice are not acceptable.

• Messages must not mention any treatment centres or clinics by name or by their location, and must not identify any staff or other patients. You can talk about your own treatment but you must not reveal who provided that treatment.

• Be patient with other users. Users of all ages and abilities will be using this Message Board including people new to the internet.

• We don’t allow spamming or advertising. Requests from organisations or the media must come via beat. If you wish to have a request posted up please contact media@b-eat.co.uk

• Messages will only be posted in the English language.

• No spoofing – you do not have to use your real name and are welcome to use a nickname but impersonating someone else is not acceptable.

• Adopting an inappropriate user name (one that is vulgar, offensive etc) is not acceptable.

• We do not allow flaming (That is when a group of Board users criticising or attacking another user)

• You must only post material that you have written. You cannot post up poetry or songs written by other people. You may not violate, plagiarise, or infringe on the rights of third parties including copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, privacy, personal, publicity or proprietary rights.

• We reserve the right to remove references to films, television programmes, books, newspapers, magazines etc which we do not believe are appropriate for the board.

• All material on this Message Board is the copyright of the author and does not represent the views of beat

About your privacy

We will not post messages that identify you to other users of the Board. However, beat does keep identifying information about you and we will use this to inform you when we have edited or deleted a message.

beat’s Confidentiality Policy states that we must seek help if we believe that you or someone in your care is at risk of significant harm. Therefore, we will inform the authorities if we believe you are in danger from suicide, self-harm or abuse of medication.

If we believe that you are vulnerable or are displaying behaviours that give rise to concern we may contact you to offer support and information or we may take action to inform the authorities of our concern.

Message Board Disclaimer

beat reserves the right to refuse to post any messages that we feel may contravene our rules or that raise issues and concerns that we do not believe should be explored on the Board. We will regularly review Message Board rules and update them if necessary. Our decision is final and we will not enter into dialogue about individual messages.

If individual Message Board Users continue to ignore or abuse Message Board rules we reserve the right to suspend them from the Board.