Psychiatry on the World Wide Web

Spinning Globe

Here are some links that I have found useful while starting to look at resources related to the web. Any opinions expressed are entirely my own!

Since Psychiatrists are medically qualified, some of these sites may be of interest to other doctors, as well as to other workers in the field of Mental Health. Most of the sites are available to the general public, therefore patients and their carers may also find helpful information here.

As there are hundreds of consultant vacancies in Psychiatry in the UK, an occasional look at the BMJ Classifieds may interest anyone who is looking for a more manageable job.

The BMJ Medline Link provides extensive searching capabilities, even though I find the user interface far from intuitive: some of you will find it very helpful for generating an impressive list of references to append to your latest attempt to persuade an erudite journal to publish your research findings.

The BMJ Home Page provides access to both of these services, and to other useful links.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists have recently created and developed an informative and extensive site, concerning the activities of the College, with information of use to Psychiatrists and others with an interest in Mental health. This site looks very promising, as it continues to evolve.

The General Medical Council has been under pressure to make changes in the way Doctors are regulated.  They have also come up with a new-look website, with much useful material.  They state that the registration status of individual Doctors will shortly be available on their site.  Watch this space!

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence is now online - NICE

There are yet more plans to reform the National Health Service - take a look at The NHS Plan to see what may lie in store or visit the NHS Site

The new MRCPsych site, promises to be a very useful resource for Psychiatrists in Training to pass Part I and Part II of the MRCPsych Examination.  Essential viewing for Psychiatric Trainees, while Royal College Examiners, Clinical Tutors and Consultants might be interested too!

Psychexam and Journey to MRCPsych are a couple of other sites aimed at Trainee Psychiatrists who are aiming to pass the MRCPsych Exam - well worth a look.  The Superego Cafe is a new MRCPsych oriented site that looks very promising.  Tina Henshall is developing a very useful site at Psychejam with a variety of info and links, including an extensive page of mnemonics, which will be helpful to trainees, (and, I suspect, to the rest of us). 

The British National Formulary and the Mental Health part of the ICD 10 may be helpful to Psychiatrists, as may Nigel Turner's Hyperguide to the Mental Health Act (1983)

If you want to find out more about your personality, try Allthetests.com - lots of useful tests, if only to help you to bluff your way through exams and interviews :-)

Doctors.net.uk offers a fairly new Internet service for the UK medical profession. The site provides registered Doctors with an email address and the promise of cheap internet access in the future. There are discussion forums and a facility to access several medical searches.

The HSJ Online Home Page helps me to keep in touch with any public information about how the NHS is being further "reformed", and there is helpful material on organisational matters. The NHS Confederation site provides a useful gateway to Health Authorities and NHS Trusts etc.

As stress levels continue to increase for patients, carers, clinicians and managers in the "New NHS", you may perhaps find it interesting to visit Bully OnLine, a first-class site which gives an informative and insightful account of the extent to which bullying has become a problem in the workplace, along with a profile of the "Serial Bully".  Of course bullying would never happen in the caring professions, or would it?!

Terry Birchmore also includes a section on bullying and scapegoating on his extensive Group Psychotherapy and Shame site, which also contains many useful sources of information related to Psychotherapy.

The Maudsley Page hosts an excellent site, with library and search facilities. Navigation is very easy and there are entire sections on all aspects of Mental Health interest.

The Computers in Mental Health site, based at Exeter University, provides information and reviews on Mental Health software, and articles and books related to this field.

The Centre for Evidence-Based Mental Health is an excellent site, while OXAMWEB also makes a pioneering attempt at looking at resources related to Evidenced-Based Mental Health, and there is also material of interest to those interested in research methodology.  A visit to the Virtual Hospital, is more clinically orientated.

OMNI provides a comprehensive site relating to biomedical resources, while the CHAIN project is developing a database of Health resources available in the North Thames Region in the UK.

Mental Health Net is a US site which lives up to its name of being a friendly site, and again there is a wealth of information available: you can even find therapists listed in the UK.

The USATAA Home Page is a good starting point for anyone with an interest in Transactional Analysis, a relatively simple and popular model for understanding the structure and process of human personality and interactions with other people.

Gary Blatch has an interesting Nursing site which has been growing since 1995 and which is updated regularly.

Catherine's Mental Health Website has an extensive collection of resources, combining some really useful information ranging from benefit entitlements to side-effects of medication, together with some moving personal accounts from sufferers with mental health problems.

Dr. John Grohol's site at Psych Central is a goldmine of information including Mental Health & Psychology Resources Online

Alzheimer's Disease International contains useful material relating to the various Dementias, while Dr. Ivan's Depression Central has links to many resources related to mood disorders and associated conditions.  Scizophrenia.com has information for professionals and lay people about Schizophrenia.

Many lesser-known conditions are also well documented on the web: I particularly like the O.A.S.I.S. site which contains a considerable amount of information on Asperger's syndrome, an unusual variety of Autism.  The National Phobics Society has extensive information and resources  for people suffering from a wide range of common troublesome problems, including anxiety, and dependence on tranquillisers. 

The Viagra debate is well on the way. An announcement on September 15th 1998 would appear to indicate that Viagra will be available only by private prescription in the UK. Should Viagra be freely available on the NHS? Reasonable medical practice might suggest that Viagra should be available in cases of Erectile Dysfunction where a Doctor with appropriate training and experience in the causes of this condition has performed a clinical assessment and considers that Viagra is, on balance, indicated as a part of a treatment plan. Dr. Harvey Caplan discusses Viagra in depth, along with other topics related to sexual dysfunction and psychotherapy.

Psychiatry On-Line is well worth a visit, and Shrinktank has to be seen (and heard) to be believed!

CyberDocs are available for on-line consultation, ( for $50! ), or you can just look round their site to see the shape of things to come with regard to medical services on the net.

The Doctor's Guide to the Internet gives access to information about many medical conditions, and there are weekly news updates - very useful.

The Department of Health has produced a consultation document on Quality in the new NHS - available in summary form online, and for downloading of the complete text.

The National Service Framework for Mental Health has now been published by the Department of Health.

The new White Paper on the Reform of the Mental Health Act (1983) - December 2000

Supporting Doctors, Protecting Patients - a consultation paper on preventing, recognising and dealing with poor clinical performance of doctors in the NHS in England.  November 1999

South Essex Psychiatric Training Scheme - for trainee psychiatrists.

Finally, I must highly recommend Dr. Peter Bruggen's book "Who Cares?" published by Jon Carpenter (1997). Dr. Bruggen is a recently retired Consultant Psychiatrist who has talked to about 100 people working in what used to be the National Health Service, and he writes frankly and sensitively about the disastrous and dehumanising effects of the NHS reforms. His anecdotes will be of great interest both to health service professionals and to patients and carers who are struggling to come to terms with the NHS being changed from a Service into a Business.

Hopefully, many more links will appear here in due course, as I encounter further sites of Mental Health interest. Runwell Hospital, where I work as Clinical Tutor, has been "going to close in two years" ever since 1968! Long may this continue to be the case. Picture of Runwell Hospital

This page will continue to be developed along with the rest of my site!

My updated Curriculum Vitae - better than counting sheep.

Last Updated: 30th September 2001

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