Over the years, since I first set up a chat room on my Web site for people with depression, I've had to take a lot of elements into consideration that many chat room hosts do not. If you're running a chat room centered on a non-mental health topic, it's fairly easy. Get a critical mass of chatters and boot troublemakers out; a lot like throwing a party in real life.

Things are not quite so simple with a depression chat room. I've developed guidelines over the years to keep people from bringing up "trigger" topics (not discussing details of "cutting" that might trigger someone to self-harm, not discussing sexual topics because it might trigger a flashback in someone who had been sexually abused, etc.). Although I finally had the operation of the chat room down to a science, I found some new problems when I decided to add a chat room in an online virtual world.

About ten years ago, I spent some time in a 2D graphical chat room called The Palace. I'm a very visual person, so I enjoyed spending time in there much more than in a standard text chat. I planned on adding it to my forum for people with depression sometime in the future in addition to text chat. By the time I felt that my forum members would be ready for an alternative to the text-based chat room, however, The Palace was already petering out, and I put the idea on hold.

Last year I came upon a virtual online world called There.com and decided to set up a chat room there. Another virtual online world, Second Life, was more popular, but I felt it was harder to use. Ease of use was important. I knew that a steep learning curve would put a lot of members off.

In these virtual worlds, members create a virtual representation of themselves called an avatar. I always choose to make mine look exactly like me, but you can give yourself an ideal body and face if you so choose, or even change your gender. In Second Life you can even be another species.

I initially “bought” a portable zone in There.com that could be placed anywhere in the virtual world, and also bought a small house to put on it. I soon found out, though, that I couldn't restrict access to the house, and that of course made privacy impossible. So I then bought the deed to a house in a fixed location, on the beach. This allowed me and anyone I designated to restrict the access to the house to people from the forum.

Keeping in mind that not everyone, especially when depressed, likes a bright, sunny venue, I bought another house in an area that was always night and somewhat goth in nature.

Then a problem that I had been somewhat worried about started escalating. Our beach house was in a great area. Unfortunately, lots of other people felt the same way. The area was constantly busy with people riding hoverboards and dune buggies through our “yard.” Although we could use the house for private conversations, the disruptions ruined casual "hanging out" outside. Worse yet, a raceway had been set up a stone's throw away from our hangout. The number of people driving, flying or walking through our yard tripled, including some lovely people who deliberately knocked our avatars over with their dune buggies.