Temple rule/policy update

Hello temple. With the approval of council, I have added a section to our rules regarding discussions of suicide and other extreme mental health behaviors. I’d like everyone to please take a look at this new rule. This rule is not up for discussion or debate. This is just merely an FYI announcement that this new policy is effective immediately. I’ll post it here, but it can also be found on the temple FAQ page under temple rules and policies.


The Temple of the Jedi Order is a religious order. Its members (irrespective of rank) do not function as mental health practitioners and are not trained to handle a mental health crisis.

We strongly encourage those experiencing mental health challenges to seek the professional help of a mental health provider in their local community rather than utilizing the Temple for something that is beyond its scope. Using the Temple as an alternative to professional mental health services:
-Obligates members of the Temple to engage in conversations for which they have no training
-Distracts from the actual purpose of the Temple
-Puts an undue burden on the community

Therefore, in order to maintain the Temple community spaces and scope, the following conversation topics are prohibited:
-Discussions about suicide or suicidal ideation
-Discussions about engaging in self-harm
-Discussions which encourage potentially hazardous delusions.

The Clergy are here to provide limited support with these things including providing information on appropriate resources, but other members may not be consulted and are not obligated to engage in these sorts of conversations. This includes both discussions on the official Discord and in the forums.

The consequences of engaging in such conversations in public and/ or with members who are not Clergy will be:
1. Warning
2. Restricted access to study only
3. Removal

If you are in need of mental health services, Psychology Today has a search function which allows you to find a local professional, while BetterHelp provides therapy services online. If you are experiencing high suicidal ideation or believe that you are at risk of seriously harming yourself due to a mental health crisis, please call 911 or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

As an additional support, there are international crisis lines and such listed in the faq as well, here:

https://www.templeofthejediorder.org/component/content/article/2-uncategorised/2284-helplines-crisislines

Thank you river. That’s an excellent catch.

I understand this isn't up for discussion but what exactly do you mean by this?
Discussions which encourage potentially hazardous delusions.

And if there are members that have mental health issues then maybe we could have a section where ways of recovery and maybe things like grounding exercises, being present now can be discussed?
As mental health issues affect most of the population what about lessons on how to help ourselves?
Banning outright discussion of mental health issues, raises problems for those going through such issues and makes it appear compassion and respect is lacking.

It's probably not meant to appear that way but this rule doesn't sit right with me. The banning of certain discussions.
I understand people here aren't trained in mental health but we can maybe offer advice of what to do if certain issues arise in people's life.
Maybe not a discussion but a selection of mental health advice in general?

“Discussions that encourage potentially hazardous delusions” has many meanings. All I can do is list some examples for why this wording was used.

We get all types of people here. Unfortunately we do occasionally also get some who have mental health issues that are so severe that they can no longer seperate what’s real from what’s in their head.

-We had a guy here who refused to shower for 3 months because lord sideous (who was orbiting the earth on his spaceship) told him that if he showered he would loose his psychic abilities. This guy ended up in the hospital after his wife took his kids and left the house because of the smell.

- we had another guy who was receiving messages in his dreams to attack random strangers in the grocery store to earn force lightning powers from the dark side.

- we have had to ban people for threatening real world violence with a firearm because they are sith and the mortal enemy of the Jedi. An they needed to eliminate the Jedi so they could live on the sith home world. This person went as far as asking myself for ip adresses of our members so they could track them down.

Now to address the rest of amayas concerns.

No one is banning talking about general mental health issues. We strongly encourage discussing things like your personal recovery, grounding exercises and so on. That said, when those conversations start involving self harm, they become more serious than we as a church are qualified to handle. There is no training here that qualifies a novice to handle a life and death situation with someone who is intent on harming themselves or others.

As most of us are in the United States, there are laws that come into play as well. As individuals we are protected by the Good Samaritan act. Meaning we can’t be held legally responsible for attempting to help someone with a medical issue. That law however does not apply to organizations to my knowledge . We can not create a space for mental health advice to be given out as very very few (only 1 that I know of) are trained and licensed mental health professionals. We are not a hospital, we are not a psychiatry clinic, we are not licensed councilors, we are not a crises hotline. That’s the plain and simple truth. It may sound harsh, but creating a section of medical advice makes the temple accountable and responsible for that advice, and that’s illegal in the country that this church is registered in. I know it for sure violates discords terms of service as I got an email about it not long ago.

Why this is important? In the past few months I have seen people give all flavors of mental health advice. I’ve seen someone tell another person who was self harming to STOP seeing their councilor and instead to come here. I have seen a minor tell someone who was talking about self harm to pm them so they could talk privately. I have seen a temple member say “just do it already and leave us alone”. And I have seen several temple members outright leave totjo because they are sick of seeing the suicide conversations. People don’t realize how triggering reading about that can be for someone who has struggled with suicidal thoughts of their own or has lost someone close to them to suicide, I know because I’m one of them. Another simple truth is that many members don’t want to be responsible for the well being of others. By publicly discussing one’s suicidal thoughts, you are obligating our members to intervene and often times that’s completely unwanted and unfair to burden someone with with out their explicit consent.

I also think it’s important to note that this rule was written by a trained mental health professional. It wasn’t written by myself or council. This rule was advised and created by a medical health professional because they know the harm that can come from bad advice. That’s not to say all advice given by our membership is bad, but if bad advice is given, it can cost someone their life. Our membership just isn’t trained to handle that.

Our clergy members can get people pointed in the right direction. They have specific training and resources that the rest of our membership do not. Anyone struggling with suicidal thoughts should reach out to a clergy member asap. They can be contacted both here and on discord.

I’d also add that as the head moderator, banning someone for this rule is highly unlikely and would only happen when the suicide talk has become obvious attention seeking behavior, has become overly disruptive, or if they refuse to seek professional help, and it’s obvious there is no real threat of self harm. We don’t ban people for seeking help if they really need it….. EVER! We are jedi after all.



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First thank you for the clarification of what was meant.

And from a legal point of view I understand more why you wouldn't create a space for mental health advice to be given out.

I think my wording was of as to what I was thinking was more personal experiences, what helped with your own recovery, such as exercise, meditation, grounding. Less giving one on one advice and more this is what helped me. A thread about what helped individuals find their own power.

But, saying that, I understand the reluctance if it makes the Temple accountable.

A “this is what helped me” thread is perfectly fine. Your always allowed to talk about your personal experiences. If you know of a great ptsd med that helps you, by all means write about it. Recommend it if it works. If you know a good therapy technique for depression, share it with whom ever you think may bennifit. Know a great meditation technique that calms you, post a video here. Those kind of things arnt what the rule is about. It’s specifically about suicide idealation, or severe delusions. Our primary concern is the safety of the people in those two scenarios, where they can be life threatening to themselves or to others.

As a new member and still somewhat of an outsider on how the Temple operates, I’d like to thank Zero for bothering to write that detailed explanation. I had some free time last night and was just browsed the forums a bit. I came across this thread and, being a free speech advocate, I had similar concerns as Amaya. So many other businesses and online spaces slowly destroy themselves by building up an opaque wall brick by brick of rules written in legalese, and never explained.

As long as you keep it clear that this is not the place for such discussions, especially the encouragement of behaviors, and the proper response should always be to direct those people to the clergy. I don’t see a problem.

In fact, I think you should take a slightly more proactive approach to help weed such people out. One way would be to add a step to registration. Get these rules written in clearly, concisely, and in plain English. Then before you can even enter your email, there would be short quiz. The whole process should take 2-3 minutes. It could be on the website or a Google forms quiz. There are many ways.