People always have concerns about using the Internet regardless of whether it’s for a credit card transaction, or for meeting a potential partner. So it’s no surprise to us that those concerns have been brought to the fore once more when it comes to online support groups and meetings.

In this 5 part series, we address those concerns and show you how they are overcome.

Part 1. The Issue of Anonymity

Online Support Groups can be likened to chat rooms. However they are not quite the same. Chat rooms are truly anonymous, not requiring an email address or any other form of identification in order to gain access, and they allow for users to freely move between virtual spaces or sites.

The common fear is that this anonymity and ease of movement is also offered by online support groups and will tend to attract inappropriate, malicious participants, or even people pretending to be suffering from the illness in question.

But this is not strictly the case. While anyone can join an Online Support Group, they must register with the organisation that is holding the group with a valid email address. Once they are registered they have no access to the personal data or information about other participants, and no way to access any part of the online meeting room after the session is over. Procedures are in place to deal with the extremely disruptive or suspicious user including the ability to remove the user from the session and ban them from returning.

Thankfully, preliminary studies indicate that malicious users are a rarity. A study of an online support group for depression found that all but 2 of the 103 participants had a diagnosis with the remaining 2 participants scoring very high on a measure of global depression (Houston, Cooper & Ford, 2002).

Another study investigating an online support group for people with eating disorders – bodywhysConnect - demonstrated that participants had symptoms that were at least, if not more symptomatic than samples that were hospitalised – traditionally considered to be at the most severe end of the spectrum. (Darcy & Dooley, 2007).

So where anonymity is concerned, the safety and security of all participants won’t be compromised.