You're not being bitchy. It's a thoughful thread.
I don't know what it is for everyone. I think for me, it's validation. I don't think I feel (any more) that I need to compete with other members on this site, because I finally do get the support I need from my team. But sometimes I read things on here that send me to an almost flashback state of times when I was really ill but professionals were not forthcoming with support. Especially when people are "taken seriously" and "sectioned/put in hospital" (which have always been two that seemed to equate in my mind, even though they're not necessarily true).
I don't think we can put things into boxes, but I fear that we do. No, I don't think being 16 and being admitted to hospital makes you immature or making it up. Nor do I think someone who is older and never been admitted is less ill than someone who is 16 and been in hospital is. It's too hard to categorise like that, but I recognise that it happens.
I know that when I was 16 I personlly was very immature also also very ill. I was never admitted to hospital. Now I'm almost 23 and (a little more) mature, still struggling a lot, and have a lot more support. I've never really been sectioned - not because I'm less ill but simply because I've got a team who's good at persuading me to go voluntarily, and whom I work closely with, and with trust.
I don't know how we change the competitive atmopshere either. It's really worrying, because things like sectioning seem almost normalised here. They're not okay and not commonplace events as they seem here but it feels like sometimes people are getting more and more drastic until they're the "illest of the illest". I'm only glad I pretty much stopped self harming before I found this site, too, otherwise I think things could have been even worse for me.
Also I wonder if people's mental health seriousness is becoming their identity.
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