Welcome to The Mining Company 's Mental Health Resources
Original Welcome message - 2/17/97
| Leonard Holmes, Ph.D. http://mentalhealth.about.com |
Welcome to this new venture! I'm excited to be bringing you the latest in online mental health resources. New sites are popping up every week. I'll do my best to find them and review them here. If you know of a site that should be reviewed here, please let me know.
The internet is a medium which would seem to lend itself to mental health work. Therapy is just words, right? Well, maybe. Psychotherapy also depends on nonverbal communication which is almost entirely absent on the net. Can you tell if I'm angry as I write this? Am I happy?
The diagnosis of mental disorders is also a tricky business. It is easy to put a depression screening test on the net. If you "flunk" the test, are you depressed? A psychiatrist or psychologist in the real world will use a variety of sources of information to make a diagnosis. While a test may be helpful, other important factors include eye contact, rate of speech, coherence of speech, posture, sleep and eating patterns, activity level, social relationships, and possible suicidal thinking. The net does not provide enough of this information.
We need to be careful as we apply techniques from the "real world" to this new medium. The internet brings new opportunities and new pitfalls. Some clinicians will embrace it and others will ignore it.
Please come back as this site is developed. Please contribute your thoughts and questions by email or on the bulletin board.
Try these other Resources: |
| Leonard Holmes, Ph.D. http://mentalhealth.about.com |