All members, please make certain you have become familiar with our community rules and guidelines before posting any content to the forum:
Propeciahelp Forum Rules
Keep Public Discussion of Post-Finasteride Syndrome Civil
Our forum is a shared community resource for patients suffering Post-Finasteride Syndrome, which describes persistent health problems despite cessation of Finasteride. We welcome members suffering an ostensibly similar syndrome persistently following use and cessation of substances with anti-androgenic action, including Saw Palmetto, SSRI antidepressants and Isotretinoin. This is not a hair loss forum nor a forum for current users of Finasteride experiencing side effects.
This is a public forum. Please treat it with the same respect you would a public park or library. Ask yourself how you would feel if your post was publicly attributed to you on the front page of the New York Times.
The following community rules aim to ensure propeciahelp.com remains a valuable resource and welcoming community for all PFS patients. Always observe the following guidelines.
Be Agreeable (Even When You Disagree)
PFS is a personal and even threatening subject for affected patients. It can be hard to keep an emotional distance with respect to the subject matter being discussed. You may wish to respond to a post with disagreement. If so, remember to criticize ideas and not people.
- Be empathetic. PFS affects people to different degrees, and unfortunately some members are in an extremely severe condition. Not everyone’s experience or symptoms will mirror your own.
- No name-calling or ad hominem attacks.
- Do not make posts of a deliberately divisive or inflammatory nature.
- Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider obscene, offensive, abusive, bigoted or hate speech.
- Do not imply other members are personally to blame for the persistence of their drug-induced health problems.
- Be respectful. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
Theories
Do not exert pressure on members to pursue self-medication. Patients differ dramatically in their symptoms and the severity of these, and significant further harm has been reported from following other users’ therapy suggestions. We understand the slow pace of scientific progress leaves patients in a difficult position, but this does not make DIY therapies any more safe or broadly effective. There is no known treatment for PFS.
PFS is not yet understood medically. Do not make definitive claims such as “PFS is this” or “Do this and it will cure you”. Instead, consider using language such as “I believe…” or “This has worked for me”. Please do not simply append “I believe” to a declarative post to evade this.
Contributions are most informative when you provide detailed accounts of your personal experiences clearly separated from inferences or theories. If you want to hypothesise or speculate, please ensure that it is clear from your post that you are presenting your personal opinion and the basis for that opinion. Do not make declarative statements regarding the etiology of PFS, or assert things without significant and specific evidence. Take care not to present your thoughts in a way that could be taken as medical advice.
External websites and organisations
Recruitment of users to medical regimes or other websites is not allowed. Users have previously expressed concerns over the recruitment and potential monetisation of vulnerable patients, so please do not link to external sites or forums even it appears easier to point to information hosted elsewhere. Instead, please share in your Member Story or the Therapeutic Efforts category precisely what brought you symptomatic improvement. This also ensures that collated information is not subject to loss following the closure of external sites and services.
Propeciahelp is an organisation with defined goals, and we consistently encourage patients to get involved with helping us achieve these. Our forum is offered as a support site, and we do not allow use of our platform for the formation of, or recruitment to, other organisations.
Soliciting Funds or Spam is Prohibited
Users may under no circumstances solicit funds here or direct users to funding projects external to those explicitly endorsed by propeciahelp or the PFS foundation. Using the platform to direct patients to funding projects or commercial interests, be it through direct solicitation or posting links, is strictly prohibited. Offering financial incentives to propeciahelp members is not permitted.
Keep It Tidy
Help keep the forum organised and a useful resource of experiences by taking the following into account:
- Start your topic in the appropriate category.
- Don’t post the same thing in multiple topics.
- Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use the Reply as a Linked Topic option.
- When posting a study as a topic in the Science category, please use the title of the study as the topic title to allow easy identification of existing discussions.
Improve the Conversation
The conversations here set the tone for every new patient and even inform professionals looking to understand the clinical situation. Help us positively shape the wider conversation surrounding PFS by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place and avoiding those that do not.
We request that you post a member story after joining so the community can better understand your personal situation, symptoms, and reasons for participation.
Before starting a topic on a subject, use the search function to check for existing discussions that it may be preferable to reply to instead. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and come back to it later.
If You See a Problem, Flag It
When you see bad behaviour, don’t reply. Being drawn into a back and forth by bad behaviour keeps it at the centre of attention and wastes everyone’s time. Click the flag icon under the post to flag it as a problem.
Site Feedback
This site is operated by the site staff. If you have any further questions or suggestions regarding the sites features, post in the site feedback thread. If there’s a critical or urgent issue with the site that can’t be handled by a post, private message or flag, contact us via the staff page.
If your concern regards site policy or a moderation decision, please send a private message to one of the moderators to discuss this further. Disagreements with moderation policy and decisions should not be aired on the forum and will be removed.
The moderators have an exceptionally difficult and thankless role in maintaining the site and community. Moderators have the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Propeciahelp takes no responsibility for, nor endorses, any content posted by site users.
Terms of Service
To use this service, you must agree to abide by our Terms of Service which describes your (and our) responsibilities and rights related to content, privacy, and related laws.