Lost in Cyberspace...(Not!)
by Rona Lopresti
Before You Set Sail
Whether you are thinking of changing your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or just want to see how your present one rates, a list of the top national ISPs, as rated by their customers, can be found at Port 2000 Newsletter (http://www.portnet.k12.ny.us/port2000/isps.htm)
Want to learn more about ISDN? Once dubbed "It Still Does Nothing," it now provides pretty fast Internet access. Cnet at http://www.computers.com/reviews/comparative/intro/0,23,0-1103-257859,00.html?st.cn.fd.acol.co makes it easy to understand the pros and cons of connecting to the Internet via this technology.
Fed up with the www (World Wide Wait?) Cable connectivity sizzles, and at an affordable price, at Comcast Home Page .http://www.comcastpc.com
Charting a Course
WebTutorials
Yahoo Internet Surf School - Yahoo's school on how to surf the Net. http://www.yahoo.com/
Those needing instructions in the basics of Internet navigation can find guidance at: Roadmap for the Internet, by Patrick Crispen, located at http://www-xdiv.lanl.gov/XTM/docs/roadmap/roadmap.html This web-based course will teach you everything you've wanted to know about the Internet and more.
The Internet for Beginners: Drivers Ed for the Information Superhighway, offered by a psychologist, Ray Arsenault, Ph.D. This interactive course will teach you the nuts and bolts of email, navigating the Internet, conferencing, and newsgroups. Interested parties can call Dr. Arsenault at 508-475-7171 or send e-mail to Workshops@POBOX.com
John Grohol, psychologist and pioneer in online mental health has a new book, The Insider's Guide to MH Resources Online, 1997, Guilford Press, which can be ordered directly from Guilford, www.guilford.com or, if you prefer snail mail to 72 Spring St., NYC 10012 or can be found at AnyPsychBook at http://www.behavior.net/AnyPsych/index.html where you can also search by author, title, or browse by subject.
Destination Websites in Psychology:
Mental Health Net at http://www.cmhc.com/ is John Grohol's omnibus page, boasting links to 6500 online resources. The page includes links and resources for clinical, self-help materials, and mental health organizations. It contains a managed care glossary, general professional and managed care discussion groups, and much more. http://www.cmhc.com/prof.htm contains links to professional resources, including ICD, DRGs and DSM online, clinical disorders pages, job listings, academic departments online, Federal and State government, graduate programs in psychology, and national professional organizations., online CE, calendar of events, links to computer billing programs, APA publication manual, and newsgroups & mailing lists.
Myron Pulier, M.D., of the NJ College of Medicine and Dentistry, provides an excellent resource at http://www.users.interport.net/~mpulier of 1900 mental health organizations all over the world indexed by name, along with their meetings and events indexed by place and date.
All things APA reside at APA's homepage at http://www.apa.org It includes full-text of the Monitor, Clinicians' Research Digest, Practice Directorate information, information for consumers, conferences,employment, convention information, public interest, science,education, division and state psychology links. Very comprehensive.
Ken (Knowledge Exchange Network) is brought to us by the U.S.Government Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) http://www.mentalhealth.org
DSM-IV diagnostic classifications are listed alphabetically and numerically on Dr. Bob's Page Robert Hsiung, MD at http://uhs.bsd.uchicago.edu/~bhsiung/tips/dsm4.html
Dr. Hsiung's Psychopharmacology Tips http://uhs.bsd.uchicago.edu/~bhsiung/tips/tips.html
Free (sic) Medline can be accessed at Medscape: http://www.medscape.com
PsychoInfo at APA for members-only is fee-based ($79.00 for a one-year subscription) which includes 111 years of abstracts (1,065,577 records published from 1887 to present) plus a growing database of full-textarticles from APA journals. A treasure-trove http://members.apa.org/welcome/pi111.html
The Source, NIMH containing information on grants, projects, committees, meetings, conferences, and press advisories on their web page at http://www.nimh.nih.gov
Drop in on "the other APA" at http://www.psych.org . This handsome page by the American Psychiatric Association features free access to current and back issues of Psychiatric News and the American Journal of Psychiatry. Read and/or download Psychiatric News and the American Journal of Psychiatry as well as consumer information, publications, and practice guidelines for depression, schizophrenia, AIDS and more.Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) at http://www.samhsa.gov contains information on prevention and treatment of substance abuse and other government resources, including a search engine and publications, reports and statistical information, grants, and a substance abuse database.
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at http://www.aacap.org/web/aacap . Comprehensive coverage with sections for the public,parents, caregivers, and professionals including current research, practice guidelines, managed care information, and archives of their Journal of the AACAP.
Information on diagnosis and treatment of the 52 most common disorders, as well as medication information can be found at Internet Mental Health at http://www.mentalhealth.com complements of Philip Long, a Canadian Psychiatrist
ERIC provides a database of over 850,000 educationally-relevant citations and abstracts, including Buros, Tests in Print, and is available at no cost. It can be accessed at http://ericae.net
One hundred and thirty downloadable psychology shareware programs are available from ShrinkTank at http://www.shrinktank.com/
Lost your copy of The Interpretation of Dreams or The Varieties ofReligious Experience? Don't worry. They're here on Dr. Russ Dewey's PsychWeb at http://www.psych-web.com/ including links to 737 Psychology Departments, psychology journals online, product links, and more.
Neuroscience on the web at Neuroguide www.neuroguide.com offers a searchable database as well as extensive resources in neuroscience, neuropsychology, and neuropsychiatry.
Neuroscience Web Search, maintained by Fred K. Lenherr, Ph.D. at www.acsiom.org/nsr contains a full-text index of over 130,000 web pages relatd to neuroscience.
Psych Journal Search, developed by John Grohol and Arrmin Guenther, is at http://www.cmhc.com/journals and has a database of over 1000 psychology, psychiatry, SW and MH-related ejournals and epubs, and provides search capabilities online. You can find journals based on topic, language, publisher, or amount of info available (TOCs only, abstracts, or full-text) including links.
Computer billing information and office management program are reviewed by Edward Zuckerman, Ph.D., at http://www.cmhc.com/guide/pro24.htm
APA Divisions web pages can be accessed from the APA home page (http://www.apa.org/about/division.html)
Managed Care abuses got you steamed? Fight back at a web that doesn't pull punches: Fight Managed Care, created and maintained by Robert Raible, webmaster and attorney, at http://www.his.com/~pico/usa.htm.
National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers http://www.execpc.com/~mastery/coalitionMain.html
Want the real scoop on what managed care is up to? HMO BuyersZoneprovides some enlightening data on HMOs at http://www.buysmart.com/hmo/hmostate.html
Caredata is a think-tank that collects information on enrollees satisfaction with managed care and provide some sobering statistics for HMOs, particularly in the mental health services area. Check it out at http://www.caredata.com
Search Engines -- Don't leave homepage without them!
Altavista www.altavista.digital.com One of the most competent search engines available for web searching, allowing you to use Boolean operators such as AND, OR, or NOT, or NEAR.
Lycos, http://point.lycos.com/categories. This search engine's strength is that it offers website reviews for the top 5 percent of sites on the topic of your choice.
Inference find, http://m5.inference.com/ifind is a metasearch engine, which means it does parallel searches utilizing multiple search engines, merges the results, removes redundancies, and clusters the results into understandable groupings.
Mamma.com, at www.mamma.com is a very smart metasearch tool for content retrieval on the World Wide Web. Your Mamma will analyze each query and properly format the words for each source it probes. Then she will then organize the results into a uniform format, and present them organized by relevance and source. Chicken soup optional.
Find out what people are saying about your favorite topic. Deja News, www.dejanews.com searches only within newsgroups for messages on the topics of your choice. Very powerful search capability.
Liszt, www.liszt.com Finds mailing lists by topic. Contains thousands of mailing lists and instructions for subscribing. Type in the word "psych" and you will get about 170 mailing lists to consider.
Your Personal Best -- Continuing Education Online
Can't sleep worrying about those CEU's you need? Register for a course any hour of the day or night, take classes in the comfort of your living room, and go at your own pace.
Audiopsych, at www.audiopsych.com provides approved CE courses for psychologists and other MH professionals, utilizing Real Audio, which allows you to listen to, rather than read, text online. The presentations include video, synchronized slides and notes which appear automatically in your browser. $12 -$15/credit hr.
PsyBC at www.psybc.com offers approved CE credits for psychologists and other mental health professionals, utilizing a mailing list protocol. The really exciting aspect of PsyBC is that it employs panels of experts in various fields, discussing via email the hottest topics in their fields. Subscribers to the list get to read the interactions between these experts, and can post questions or comments which may receive the attention of the panel.
WebEd -at http://ceus.com Offers basic courses in a self-paced format and include quizzes and online assignments. Communication with the instructor is available via email.
Distance Learning: On-Line Education Library of Resources at www.integralink.com/olel Listing of institutions offering courses online.
Online case conferences are held at Behavior online www.behavior.net/ with experts in various areas presenting and discussing cases with participants.
Be Careful Out There
Never, never download a program from the Internet without checking for viruses. In my opinion the best virus protection programs can be obtained from McAfee at http://www.nai.com/products/antivirus
Norton (from Symantec) http://www.norton.com
These programs can be bought from resellers like CompUSA, or can be downloaded directly from the software company. And please don't forget to update the program frequently as new viruses are arriving on the scene regularly.
If you find one of these links is inaccurate, or have any other problems, suggestions, or comments, I'd appreciate hearing from you at lopresti@home.com
Disclaimer: Listing in this page does not imply that I endorse the persons or products, and I are not responsible for the accuracy of data contained herein. Please be aware that URLs change constantly, as well as web page content. Thus I cannot certify the quality or accuracy of any of the aforementioned sites.
Copyright Notice: Some of these links and annotations appeared in the New Jersey Psychologist, Spring, 1998.