Mental Health Net - The biggest mental health site on the net?
| Leonard Holmes, Ph.D. http://mentalhealth.about.com |
At the time of this review (May of 1997) Mental Health Net billed itself as "the largest, most comprehensive guide to mental health online, featuring over 6,000 individual resources."
Mental Health Net is sponsored by CMHC Systems, which describes itself as "the pioneer company in developing information technology for mental health organizations." Their gift of this site to the mental health community is unparalleled, but a site is just disk space without a webmaster. John Grohol, Psy.D. created the site in September of 1995. He has devoted much of his time since then developing and tweaking the site. His effort has paid off in a solid site which is relatively easy to navigate in spite of its size. (Grohol left in 1999 to run the mental health section of DrKoop.com).
The opening page includes a search engine and an index of internal links broken into four sections. The search engine (1n 1997) used excite technology and includes the full text of articles posted to various bulletin boards. My searches found many articles, some of which were only marginally related to the subject that I entered. This search engine is still the best way to quickly find a resource on this site.
Mental Health Net is undergoing a face-lift. This feature is being written before most of the content features the new look. Users will be able to give immediate feedback on resources, and changes may even be in store for the search engine. The site is so big that we will only be exploring half of it this week. The rest of the site will be featured soon, and the new features of the updated site will be reviewed.
The Reading Room
The Reading Room contains several different types of reading material, along with opportunities for interactions with others. Perspectives Magazine is an online magazine which deserves to be its own website. Various discussion forums, and the General Discussion Forum are available in this section. Dr. Grohol writes a monthly editorial, and asks a question of the month which readers answer. They also react to his editorial in a roundtable discussion. Interactive opinion polls are available on a number of issues. What's new highlights the newest material on the site.
Mental Health Administration
This section includes a Managed Care Glossary which includes some very technical terms. The latest news includes links to administration and managed care resources throughout the net, and to news articles on managed behavioral care. A discussion forum and an opinion poll are available here too.
The other two main sections are Professional Resources and Self-Help Resources. These sections have both original content and links to other resources. Read on for information....
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Graphic used by permission of Mental Health Net| Leonard Holmes, Ph.D. http://mentalhealth.about.com |
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