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"A Web of Mental Health" By
Sam Vaknin
Never before
was such a wealth of material about mental health available to the public.
Whole libraries are placed on line daily. It is a blessing - yet, in the
disguise of clutter. In 6 years of constant daily surfing, I discovered
that I much prefer directories to search engines. The bigger the subject
- the better a web directory is as a starting point. I am an editor of
mental health categories in a few directories but my favourite is the
Open Directory Project.
Click on "Health" and then "Mental Health". Thousands
of web sites are arranged in categories from "Addiction and Recovery"
to "Web Directories and Indices". The "Disorders"
category (of which I am the editor) contains listings on mental health
disorders. Rare conditions are listed in "Other Disorders".
Another favourite
of mine is Snap.com.
Web directories differ in their editorial content and quality of links
- rather than in hierarchical structure. Another
up and coming directory is Go.com.
Yahoo!, surprisingly, has very
poor and out of date mental health content. Looksmart
is, as usual, superb, though much more selective than the Open Directory.
A few enterprising
mental health professionals have created their own directories. These
are often professionally and editorially superior to all-purpose directories.
These sites usually include the diagnostic criteria of mental health disorders,
resources regarding various treatment modalities, links to other content
web sites, chat and discussion areas organized in communities, recommended
reading and, sometimes, therapist directories. Among the most notable:
Internet Mental
Health, Mental Help
Net, PsychCentral - Dr. John Grohol's
Mental Health Page, Self-Help
and Psychology Magazine.
Similar "private"
directories are maintained by dot.coms or mental health clinics. Some
of them are commercially oriented - though this by no means affects the
high quality of the contents. Among the more conspicuous: HealthyPlace,
Mental
Health Ask the Expert Archive, Mental
Health InfoSource, At
Health, drkoop -
which might fold later this year due to lack of financing, Mental Health Matters,
Psyche Matters.
Though, in
my view at least, inferior to the what the cream of the private sector
has to offer, one cannot ignore sites maintained by various associations
and organizations. The American
Psychological Association maintains a public access resources area,
which includes a not-too-thrilling search
engine. NAMI - the National
Alliance for the Mentally Ill - maintains its own databases. In the
UK, there is PsychNet
UK. Each mental health disorder and each subject in normal (as opposed
to abnormal) psychology have their dedicated following and web sites.
While it is impossible to describe even the contours of these veritable
galaxies, some web sites are clustered in "communities". Thus,
for instance, Suite
101 has a "Mental Health" category with some priceless web
sites with content not found anywhere else. The same goes for Geocities and Tripod. But their search engines
are awful. Better browse the relevant neighbourhoods for hidden treasures.
Finally, don't miss the superb mental health online libraries offered
in such rich and free abundance: Online
texts, the archives
of the "Journal of Psychiatry", the famous Merck Manual, and
Medscape
Psychiatry Resources.
Sam
Vaknin, an economic and political columnist and a published and awarded
author of short fiction and reference, is currently economic advisor to
the government of Macedonia. He has collaborated with Israeli psychologists
and criminologists in the study of personality disorders and is the author
of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" and "After the Rain -
How the West Lost the East". He is the editor of the Mental Health Disorders
category in the Open Directory Project and of the Narcissistic Personality
Disorder topic in Suite101.
Web
address: http://www.geocities.com/vaksam/
Email address: palma@unet.com.mk
or samvak@briefcase.com
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