Mentalhope.com Hope and Recovery from Mental Illness.

As I sit here watching Winston gleefully playing in my paperwork which he does so with his masterful ability to randomize my organization on a level that you can only appreciate, I am blogging on a few new things added/changed to the Mentalhope site.

When the site first under went contruction, I was a little manic. I thought it would be up in a couple of weeks. That was Oct, 2006. Those of you who have mania can relate? The site started up and looked like crap. After the mania past, I thought I will just find some content from another site and cut and paste, do some visuals, and call it a day. I couldn’t do that in good conscious though. So the search began and a criteria developed for the site.

The things I thought the site should be were:

1) Unique content. Things that are at the base of recovery, but from a different perspective.

2) Easy to navigate. I know when I have been on higher doses of drugs and go to a complex site, I got frustratied and would move on to more inportant things like playing solitaire.

3) Interactive. A place to share that will respond and show respect to those who visit the site. A place to share and support not only folks in Omaha, but anywhere in the world.

4) Visually attractive. Nice but not so many bells and whistles that it takes forever and a day to load. 

The outcome is now thanks to you. You can see to some extent in this site my norm, mania, paranoia, and depression. Does this site belong to me? No. And it never will. It belongs to us. You and me. If you have any suggestions, I will listen. If you ever want to contribute, the door is open. If you want to tell your story, you will have your own page. I never had some lofty goal of doing a website. I just got the most precious gift in the world in that of recovery and hope and wanted to share it with the world. I mean even people without mental illness gets a hold of something that is good and they want to share it.

Some of the things we are adding on to the Mentalhope site is community pages to post mental health community events in your town. We are also adding a warm line if you just need to talk. I got the idea from the Spring Center here in Omaha where they have a telephone warm line. A chat room is also being added as well as a fun and games section.

In other breaking news: Winston is going to group therapy with me today. He is shy, but he likes to meet people and pet therapy is always nice. I am going to the park today. I need to get out of the house. Today I am a little frightened to do so other than going for coffee and for therapy. Sometimes I found if just do it, it helps with my symptoms.

If you want to visit some of the new stuff on www.mentalhope.com, go to www.mentalhope.com/Omaha. That’s the community page being set up for Omaha and entrance the chat room. Each town will have there own chat and then maybe do a chat room for everyone. If you want a chat room for your group(ie. AA, Schizophrenia Support, etc.), let me know.

On another note, the rss feed is now working! For those of you who wonder what the heck it is, it is kinda of a news feed and in this case gives a list of topics from the blog. I will have a link in the future for some good rss feed software.

Also while I think about it, if you would like your blog on the community page in your town let me know. It doesn’t have to be a wordpress blog(wordpress good ) , but we do have to set up a community page for your town.

The sun is shinning and its time for more coffee. Got to run.

Keep it real, keep it true,

Rod

www.Mentalhope.com | rod@mentalhope.com | rss: http://rss.mentalhope.com