Terms of Service

Talk Mental builds technologies and services to enable people to support each other’s mental wellbeing in an online community. We also keep our community informed of relevant and news on the subject of mental wellness and encourage them to find professional help when needed or desired. 

These terms govern your use of Talk Mental and the other products, features, apps, services and technologies we offer, except where we expressly state that separate terms (and not these) apply. These Products are provided to you by Talk Mental.

We don’t charge you to use Talk Mental or the other products and services covered by these Terms. Instead, businesses and organizations pay us to be listed in our Directory of “Where to find help”, and/or to show you ads for their products and services. By using our Products, you agree that we can show you ads that we think will be relevant to you and your interests.

We don’t sell your personal data to advertisers, and we don’t share information that directly identifies you (such as your name, email address or other contact information) with advertisers unless you give us specific permission. We provide advertisers with reports about the performance of their ads that help them understand how people are interacting with their content.

1. The services we provide

Our mission is to connect people that want to talk about mental health in a safe environment, ultimately aiming to remove the stigma and make mental health discussions as mainstream as asking your mate when the last time was they visited the gym.

1.1 Social Platform.

Your experience on Talk Mental is unlike anyone else’s: from the posts, news articles and other content you see on your wall, to the other features you might use such as groups and private messaging. We aim to connect you with people that can support you, and you can support in return through your battle with mental health.

1.2 Directory of Services.

We help you find and connect with people, groups, businesses, organizations, and others that matter to you across the Talk Mental Products you use.

We empower you to express yourself and communicate about what matters to you:

There are many ways to express yourself on Talk Mental and to communicate with others about what matters to you – for example, sharing status updates, photos, videos, and stories across the Talk Mental Products you use, sending messages to a friend or several people, creating groups and forums, or adding content to your profile.

1.3 Protection of our community.

People will only build community on Talk Mental if they feel safe. We have developed advanced technical systems to detect misuse of our Products, harmful conduct towards others, and situations where we may be able to help support or protect our community. If we learn of content or conduct like this, we will take appropriate action – for example, offering help, removing content, removing or restricting access to certain features, disabling an account, or contacting law enforcement. We share data authorities when we detect misuse or harmful conduct by someone using one of our Products.

We have also developed automated systems to improve our ability to detect and remove abusive and dangerous activity that may harm our community, or the integrity of our Products

1.4 Use of advanced technologies.

We use and develop advanced technologies so that people can use our Products safely regardless of physical or psychological ability, or geographic location. For example, technology helps people that are suffering from a specific mental illness such as an eating disorder, search for professional services nearby them that deal with that specific issue. The ability to read reviews on the business before they commit to an expensive initial consultation is our way of putting the power back into the hands of the customer – you.

2. How our services are funded

Instead of paying to use Talk Mental and the other products and services we offer covered by these Terms, we charge businesses to advertise.

2.1 Directory of Services (Where to find help).

We charge the businesses to be listed the directory of “Where to find help”.

All businesses advertise in some way. Often advertising is directed to the general public meaning that their ads are irrelevant to 80% of their audience.

The businesses that advertise on Talk Mental are advertising only to the 20% of the population that may require their services.

The reviews, advanced search and filtering functionality of Talk Mental’s directory, enable the businesses to attract new clients that are matched to their specialised offering and approach.  Ultimately we want our advertisers to allocate their resources to the people for whom they can make a big difference.

Simultaneously, we want our users and members to utilise these advanced functionalities to assist in their selection of healthcare providers, so that they stop wasting time and money on initial consultations before they discover the service they selected isn’t right for them.

2.2 Advertising

We sell advertising blocks in the sidebars and occasionally main content sections of the pages of Talk Mental. All paid advertisements and content are labeled as “sponsored” to ensure no confusion.

2.3 Personal data.

We will never sell your personal data.

2.4 Reporting to businesses listed in the directory and advertisers.

We do provide advertisers with reports about the performance of their listings and ads to help them understand how people are interacting with their content on Talk Mental. This is limited to analytics provided by Google on interaction with a certain page, ad or listing on Talk Mental.

No personal information or identifying data of users or members is ever released, such as your name, profile username, email address, phone number, age, location or any information on the type of mental health issue you have encountered.

3. Your commitments to Talk Mental and our community

We provide these services to you and others to help advance our mission of enabling people with mental health concerns to connect with each other and build communities, as well as keeping you informed on the subject matter.

In exchange, we need you to make the following commitments:

3.1. Who can use Talk Mental.

When people stand behind their opinions and actions, our community is safer and more accountable.

• Please enter your actual email address when signing up.
• We suggest not using your full name when creating a username
• Please provide accurate information about yourself. You should not claim to have a mental illness that you have not been diagnosed with by an accredited health care provider.
• However, you are welcome to join Talk Mental if you are concerned you have a mental illness and wish to discuss with this with others.
• Please create only one account (your own).
• Do not share your password, give access to your Talk Mental account to others, or transfer your account to anyone else.

3.2. What you can share and do on Talk Mental.

We want people to use Talk Mental to express themselves and to share content that is important to them, but not at the expense of the safety and well-being of others or the integrity of our community. You therefore agree not to engage in the conduct described below (or to facilitate or support others in doing so):

1. You may not use our Products to do or share anything:
   • That violates these Terms that apply to your use of Talk Mental.
   • That is unlawful, misleading, discriminatory or fraudulent.
   • That infringes or violates someone else’s rights, including their intellectual property rights.
2. You may not upload viruses or malicious code or do anything that could disable, overburden, or impair the proper working or appearance of our Products.
3. You may not access or collect data from our Products using automated means (without our prior permission) or attempt to access data you do not have permission to access.

We can remove or restrict access to content that is in violation of these provisions.

If we remove content that you have shared in violation of our Community Standards ot these Terms, we’ll let you know and explain any options you have to request another review, unless you seriously or repeatedly violate these Terms or if doing so may expose us or others to legal liability; harm our community of users; compromise or interfere with the integrity or operation of any of our services, systems or Products; where we are restricted due to technical limitations; or where we are prohibited from doing so for legal reasons.

To help support our community, we encourage you to report content or conduct that you believe violates your rights or our Terms and Policies.

4. The permissions you give us

We need certain permissions from you to provide our services:

4.1 Permission to use content you create and share.

Some content that you share or upload, such as photos or videos, may be protected by intellectual property laws.
You own the intellectual property rights (things like copyright or trademarks) in any such content that you create and share on Talk Mental. Nothing in these Terms takes away the rights you have to your own content. You are free to share your content with anyone else, wherever you want.
However, to provide our services we need you to give us some legal permissions (known as a ‘license’) to use this content. This is solely for the purposes of providing and improving our Products and services as described in Section 1 above.
Specifically, when you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights on or in connection with our Products, you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content. This means, for example, that if you share a photo on Talk Mental, you give us permission to store, copy, and share it with others (again, consistent with your settings) such as service providers that support our service or other Talk Mental Products you use.This license will end when your content is deleted from our systems.
You can delete content individually or all at once by deleting your account.

When you delete content, it’s no longer visible to other users, however it may continue to exist elsewhere on our systems where:

1. immediate deletion is not possible due to technical limitations (in which case, your content will be deleted within a maximum of 90 days from when you delete it);
2. your content has been used by others in accordance with this license and they have not deleted it (in which case this license will continue to apply until that content is deleted); or
3. where immediate deletion would restrict our ability to:
   • investigate or identify illegal activity or violations of our Terms and Policies (for example, to identify or investigate misuse of our Products or systems);
   • comply with a legal obligation, such as the preservation of evidence; or
   • comply with a request of a judicial or administrative authority, law enforcement or a government agency;

4.2 Retention of content

in which case, the content will be retained for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it has been retained (the exact duration will vary on a case-by-case basis).
In each of the above cases, this license will continue until the content has been fully deleted. Permission to use your name, profile picture, and information about your actions with ads and sponsored content: You give us permission to use your name and profile picture and information about actions you have taken on Talk Mental next to or in connection with ads, offers, and other sponsored content that we display across our Products, without any compensation to you. For example, we may show your friends that you are interested in an advertised event or have liked a Page created by a brand that has paid us to display its ads on Talk Mental. Ads like this can be seen only by people who have your permission to see the actions you’ve taken on Talk Mental. You can learn more about your ad settings and preferences.

4.3 Limits on using our intellectual property

If you use content covered by intellectual property rights that we have and make available in our Products (for example, images, designs, videos, or sounds we provide that you add to content you create or share on Talk Mental), we retain all rights to that content (but not yours). You must obtain our written permission (or permission under an open source license) to modify, create derivative works of, decompile, or otherwise attempt to extract source code from us.

5. Additional provisions

5.1 Updating our Terms

We work constantly to improve our services and develop new features to make our Products better for you and our community. As a result, we may need to update these Terms from time to time to accurately reflect our services and practices. We will only make any changes if the provisions are no longer appropriate or if they are incomplete, and only if the changes are reasonable and take due account of your interests.

We will notify you (for example, by email or through our Products) at least 30 days before we make changes to these Terms and give you an opportunity to review them before they go into effect, unless changes are required by law. Once any updated Terms are in effect, you will be bound by them if you continue to use our Products.

We hope that you will continue using our Products, but if you do not agree to our updated Terms and no longer want to be a part of the Talk Mental community, you can delete your account at any time by contacting us and requesting us to do so.

5.2 Account suspension or termination

We want Talk Mental to be a place where people feel welcome and safe to express themselves and share their thoughts and ideas.

If we determine that you have clearly, seriously or repeatedly breached our Terms or Policies, including in particular our Community Standards, we may suspend or permanently disable access to your account. We may also suspend or disable your account if you repeatedly infringe other people’s intellectual property rights or where we are required to do so for legal reasons.

Where we take such action we’ll let you know and explain any options you have to request a review, unless doing so may expose us or others to legal liability; harm our community of users; compromise or interfere with the integrity or operation of any of our services, systems or Products; or where we are restricted due to technical limitations; or where we are prohibited from doing so for legal reasons.

You can learn more about what you can do if your account has been disabled and how to contact us if you think we have disabled your account by mistake.

If you delete or we disable your account, these Terms shall terminate as an agreement between you and us, but the following provisions will remain in place: 3, 5.2 – 5.5.

5.3 Limits on liability

We work hard to provide the best Products we can and to specify clear guidelines for everyone who uses them. Our Products, however, are provided “as is,” and we make no guarantees that they always will be safe, secure, or error-free, or that they will function without disruptions, delays, or imperfections. To the extent permitted by law, we also DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. We do not control or direct what people and others do or say, and we are not responsible for their actions or conduct (whether online or offline) or any content they share (including offensive, inappropriate, obscene, unlawful, and other objectionable content).

We cannot predict when issues might arise with our Products. Accordingly, our liability shall be limited to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, and under no circumstance will we be liable to you for any lost profits, revenues, information, or data, or consequential, special, indirect, exemplary, punitive, or incidental damages arising out of or related to these Terms or the Talk Mental Products, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

5.4 Disputes

We try to provide clear rules so that we can limit or hopefully avoid disputes between you and us. If a dispute does arise, however, it’s useful to know up front where it can be resolved and what laws will apply.

If you are a consumer, the laws of the country in which you reside will apply to any claim, cause of action, or dispute you have against us that arises out of or relates to these Terms or the Talk Mental Products, and you may resolve your claim in any competent court in that country that has jurisdiction over the claim. In all other cases, you agree that the claim must be resolved exclusively in the New Zealand Civil Court. You also agree that you submit to the personal jurisdiction of either of these courts for the purpose of litigating any such claim, and that the laws New Zealand will govern these Terms and any claim, without regard to conflict of law provisions.

5.5 Other

1. These Terms (formerly known as the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities) make up the entire agreement between you and Talk Mental regarding your use of our Products. They supersede any prior agreements.
2. Some of the Products we offer are also governed by supplemental terms. If you use any of those Products, supplemental terms will be made available and will become part of our agreement with you. To the extent any supplemental terms conflict with these Terms, the supplemental terms shall govern to the extent of the conflict.
3. If any portion of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the remaining portion will remain in full force and effect. If we fail to enforce any of these Terms, it will not be considered a waiver. Any amendment to or waiver of these Terms must be made in writing and signed by us.
4. You will not transfer any of your rights or obligations under these Terms to anyone else without our consent.
5. You may designate a person (called a legacy contact) to manage your account if it is memorialized. Only your legacy contact or a person who you have identified in a valid will or similar document expressing clear consent to disclose your content upon death or incapacity will be able to seek disclosure from your account after it is memorialized.
6. These Terms do not confer any third-party beneficiary rights. All of our rights and obligations under these Terms are freely assignable by us in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, or by operation of law or otherwise.
7. You should know that we may need to change the username for your account in certain circumstances (for example, if someone else claims the username and it appears unrelated to the name you use in everyday life). We will inform you in advance if we have to do this and explain why.
8. We always appreciate your feedback and other suggestions about our Products and services. But you should know that we may use them without any restriction or obligation to compensate you, and we are under no obligation to keep them confidential.
9. We reserve all rights not expressly granted to you.

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