I thought I would do a post about how to make the most out of your visits to NMP and give you some tips that you may not even have known.
Active Topics
I always use the "Since Last visit" as I stay logged in to the forum (using the 'remember me' check box) but I also use the "Last hour" option a lot as well. In this way you can see what new posts have been done in the specified time frame.
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Searching for previous posts
I always encourage people to look for previous posts before starting a new one as the chances are someone has already posted about your problem and you also get the chance to read more information rather than wait for someone to reply to your thread. Please don't start a new thread until you have tried the options below and looked for your own problem so you can reply to existing threads. It can be very frustating for regular members to reply to the same posts over and over again and in time people stop replying as they have said the same thing many times.
Ways of doing this:
Look for the relevant forum
We have many forums and sub-forums. So, for example, if you are on the medication Citalopram then read the threads in the Citalopram sub-forum:
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Search for previous posts:
There is a search facility on here so please take a look.
Click on Search at the top of the screen.
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If you want to search for exact words then enclose them in "'s
E.G. "pain in chest", "increase citalopram 30mg"
If you go to the advanced search you can search in just the titles too.
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As another example, I know that I did a post about CBT for driving problems so I can search for those key words and posts by my login name:
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Please use this frequently as your question has probably already been answered.
We get multiple postings on here for the same thing and it is easier to search for previous replies so PLEASE USE IT.
Similar threads
I thought you may also like to know about the "Similar threads" facility on here.
If you go right to the very end of a thread you will see the following.
It is a bit crude in how it works as it looks for threads with similar words in the titles but works well for specific posts like the one shown below where the member was looking for posts about "monophobia".
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It would really help if you gave your post a meaningful title so that others can more easily find your post. Titles like "help", "hello", "panic" don't really help others to find your post so make it more informative such as "panic attack today whilst out shopping", "withdrawing from Citalopram - any advice", "stomach pains" etc.
Multiple/Duplicate posts
Please chose ONE forum to post your message in and do NOT post it in every fourm. This is not necessary and the admins will remove the duplicate posts that you do and this takes up their valuable time. If you post it in the wrong forum then don't worry as we will move it if we think it is better suited in another forum.
Look around and help others
We pride ourselves on the community spirit we have here and everyone helping each other. Just because you suffer from Health Anxiety it does not mean that you cannot look at posts in other forums and help other people.
Please try not to be so focused on one forum that you do not read posts in other forums and offer support and advice to other people.
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