forum.schizophrenia.com is well known amongst those affected mainly because it is the first google.com result for schizophrenia forum. Even before reddit.com
The forum is closing tho at the end of 2025, so in a few days, and all content that has ever been posted to it will be deleted. I have been a member of the forum since 2019, around the time it started to seriously decline in usership which contributed to the closure along with the owner's financial concerns.
An identical spin off forum has been created at
https://schizophreniasupport.discourse.group/
It's basically the same site as before, but will likely get fewer new members as it wont be listed on any search most likely.
Gosh, that’s so sad it’s shutting down. I think that website saved my life when I was a kid and struggling undiagnosed/untreated back then. Reading the advice and stories of other people with schizophrenia helped me learn how to survive with mine when I had no one to help me. Books and articles about schizophrenia helped a lot too, but actually being able to read the experiences of people going through the same thing really made a huge difference.
I'm glad you found help through the site. I've spent many hours there over the years. That site versed me in the language of schizophrenia when I didnt have words to communicate or understand a lot.
Yeah, I'd heard about the finances being a factor, but I didn't know it was this bad.
I never used the forums myself, but a lot of people (such as yourself) speak very highly of it. It always sucks having an ally go down, and they ran a clean show over there. I can imagine the disappointment I feel is but a fraction of what the long-time users must feel.
I'm sorry to hear that. I hope we can be an adequate substitute for the time being at the very least.
Yes there are quite a few people, over a hundred, that will see one of their main social hubs lost with this closure. I don't expect much longevity out of the new site but I could be wrong
Yeah, here's hoping it picks up some steam.
Reddit drops a pretty decent chunk of change on SEO, so I can imagine that part of the financial woes that fell on the forums was having to pay for SEO themselves. Real dirty how they do it, essentially demand a bribe so your results will be posted first.
I'm under no illusion to the contrary that r/schizophrenia is the size that it is for any reason other than SEO. There's word of mouth, sure, but some regularly Google'd questions from years ago still get thousands of views a month. It's hard to compare to that.
Times have been hard for a lot of psychosis advocacy groups in the past few years, we've seen a few places we're friendly with go under or have to change their model. It always sucks. We (the mods) might be volunteer internet janitors and work for "free," but the hosting and SEO is all paid for by the company. Reddit has the money to stay afloat when others can't afford it.
It's such a great searchable source of relevant research studies. I don't think that can be substituted if it's nuked.
Time to beef up the FAQ lol. That post gets thousands of views a month.
Theoretically, we could use the Wiki pages as an archive of sorts. Might as well get the most we can from our corporate overlords (Reddit) footing the bill for hosting.
I just wish we had more time to do it. I don't think I can accomplish that in such a short time frame.
Tell them over at r/darahoarders so they can archive it!