Web Sites Worth Watching
Psychiatric Services offers a monthly listing of mental-health-related Web sites and other sites of interest. The list changes monthly as new sites are identified and existing sites add new features. We'd like maintaining the list to be an interactive process, so tell us about your favorite sites or what you'd like to be able to find on the Web. You can reach us by e-mail at [email protected].
Associations
American Group Psychotherapy Association—www.groupsinc.org Offers general information about group psychotherapy, a section designed for group therapists and students, a list of upcoming association meetings and events, and information about how to contact affiliated societies for clients seeking group therapy practitioners.
Association of Academic Health Centers—www.ahcnet.org The site provides information for its members—more than 100 health complexes of the major U.S. universities. A monthly feature profiles a member institution. Visitors can order publications and reports from the association's catalog.
Government
National Library of Medicine—www.nlm.nih.gov Along with providing access to MEDLINE for researchers, this site allows users to peruse the library's catalog and databases, learn about current research programs, and borrow research materials through interlibrary loan.
Clinical Trials—www.clinicaltrials.gov The National Institutes of Health created this site to establish a registry of clinical trials for both federally and privately funded trials of experimental treatments for serious and life-threatening diseases or conditions. It provides patients and members of the public with information about more than 4,000 current clinical research studies.
Health and Medicine
CBS Healthwatch—cbshealthwatch. com This site's contents are provided by Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston. Covering topics ranging from weight loss to depression, articles are displayed by degree of difficulty, from those written on a sixth-grade level to those written for doctors.
The Merck Manual of Medical Information—Home Edition—www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual_home/contents.htm This online publication for medical nonprofessionals is based on the 100-year-old Merck Manual, one of the most widely used textbooks of medicine in the U.S. and around the world. The Home Edition transforms the language of the Merck Manual into commonly used English while retaining vital information about diseases, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. The site includes a link to Merck's Health InfoPark, another useful source of health information.
Other Useful Resources
Martindale's Health Science Guide —www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/HS Guide.html The site contains over 60,000 teaching files, nearly 130,000 medical cases, and over 1,000 courses and online textbooks in areas ranging from primary care and nutrition to medical law and public health.
Featured Site
Bureau of Primary Health Care—www.bphc.hrsa.dhhs.gov
The mission of the Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC) is to increase access to comprehensive primary and preventive health care and to improve the health status of underserved and vulnerable populations. BPHC is one of four bureaus of the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services. The Web site provides descriptions of more than two dozen BPHC programs, including safety-net activities such as the Health Care for the Homeless Program, technical assistance programs for states, and scholarship programs to place health care professionals in shortage areas. The site also offers information on a major new initiative of the bureau, the Center for Communities in Action, whose goal is to help communities build partnerships with hospitals and health maintenance organizations to ensure access to health care for all community residents. An extensive list of links takes visitors to primary care sites on topics such as AIDS, cultural competence in health care provision, and women's health.
