Links to Other Resources

General Health Information

Medical Symptoms: This is a very useful general reference that talks about common medical symptoms and helps you to gather information that your doctor may want to know, and that also will allow you to determine when a problem is an emergency, and when getting help is less urgent.

General Mental Health Information

Mental Help Net: home of the oldest and largest online mental health guide and community.

National Alliance for the Mentally Ill: a grassroots, self-help support and advocacy organization of families and friends of people with serious mental illness, and those persons themselves.

National Mental Health Association: This organization has a helpful list of organizations involved in providing support to those with mental health conditions, as well as for family members.

American Psychiatric Association: a medical society, recognized world-wide, whose 40,500 U.S. and international physicians specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of mental and emotional illnesses and substance use disorders.

Pubmed: the National Library of Medicine's search service that provides access to over 11 million citations in MEDLINE, PreMEDLINE, and other related databases, with links to participating online journals.

Expert Consensus Guidelines: Guides for Patients and Families
This website has the most comprehensive and up to date guides for patients and families with a variety of psychiatric conditions, including depression, bipolar disorder, various anxiety disorders, PTSD, etcetera. Some of them are even in Spanish.

Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Other Mood Disorders

The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) DBSA was formerly the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association (National DMDA.) DBSA publishes more than two dozen educational materials about living with mood disorders, all available free of charge.

Jim Phelps PsychEducation website is a wealth of information on bipolar disorder, especially the "softer" bipolar spectrum of cyclothymia and bipolar type 2. It includes absolutely free the entire text of his great book: "Why Am I Still Depressed?".

Tom Wootton's Bipolar Advantage is dedicated to the idea that there are benefits to the experience of mood swings and that an important part of coming to grips with a mood disorder is understanding those benefits. He is a thoughtful person who has learned a lot from his own experience. Several patients at Gateway have attended seminars he has put on and found them to be very informative as well as inspirational.

Dr. Ivan's Depression Central: the Internet's central clearinghouse for information on all types of depressive disorders and on the most effective treatments for individuals suffering from Major Depression, Manic-Depression (Bipolar Disorder), Cyclothymia, Dysthymia and other mood disorders.

McMan's Depression and Bipolar Web
More than 250 articles on all aspects of depression and bipolar, plus news, FAQs, books, forums, and newsletter.

Medscape Bipolar Mania Info Site
Use of Medscape is FREE, requiring a simple one-time member registration. You can register, by filling out the online form and clicking the "Submit" button.

The Bipolar Disorder Sanctuary features suggested reading as well as bipolar criteria, self-care information, a chat room, personal stories and support.

Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety and Panic and Mindfulness Meditation

This is a very useful and interesting site that talka about the use of mindfulness techniques (see below) to help people with anxiety disorders. Lots of information and links.

Forensic Psychiatry

Mark I. Levy, MD, FAPA

Doctor Mark Levy, an expert in forensic psychiatry, has compiled an extensive set of resources on the topic. Topics include the standard of care for psychiatric practice, the Americans with Disabilities Act, employment discrimination and harassment, among others.

Self Help Resources

Dieting and Fitness

American Heart Association Fitness Center
This site by the American Heart Association provides all the resources you need to keep physically fit. Tools available include an 'Exercise Diary,' 'Fitness Resources,' and 'My Fitness' that helps you learn what fitness type best describes your lifestyle and how to get the greatest benefit from physical activity in your life.

eDiets.com.
The most extensive site we reviewed, eDiets, is flexible enough to fit just about anybody's needs. You'll find an avalanche of articles, questions and answers, and success stories. Members start by picking one of 16 diet plans, (we recommend the excellent eDiets plan) and an exercise regimen. You get weekly meal plans, recipes with shopping lists, and caloric breakdowns. eDiets also makes it easy to synchronize a partner with your diet plan. The exercise program has animations that show how to do exercises correctly. The community area is equally wide ranging. On top of chat rooms, scheduled online group meetings, and forums, there's a buddy program called "circle of winners" that lets experienced members volunteer as mentors for newbies or for anyone who needs encouragement. Experts in a number of fields are available to answer members questions. Pricing is a bit complicated. One common scenario is to pay 5 dollars per week for a diet plan and then purchase fitness and recipe options, each costing an additional dollar a week.

www.yogalearningcenter.com
Although you can find a lot of information about yoga on the web, the yoga learning center is the first online yoga studio. This site adds a spiritual element to physical health that's refreshing to those who don't care about washboard abs and counting carbs. The YLC has video and audio practices suited to people of all skill and fitness levels.
A library of streaming audio and video content comes courtesy of yoga instructors. You can search by teacher, experience level, media type (audio, audio meditation, or video) and benefit, such as weight loss, back pain relief, or stress reduction. Sessions can be up to an hour long. The site also offers a handful of informative articles and a fledgling forum section. For $17.95 a month you have unlimited access to the site and all its contents. You won't find dietary advice or log calendars, but compared to the cost of attending regular yoga classes or amassing a yoga DVD collection, the YLC's approach is very reasonable.

www.weightwatchers.com
Weight watchers online serves up simplicity and easy to achieve results in large portions. You can use this site as an accessory to weight watchers traditional meetings or as a standalone service. You won't be isolated from peer support. When we dropped into a chat room, the fourteen visitors there were discussing how to make diet friendly tacos. The foundation of weight watchers is the point system. Every food has a given number of points, based on calories, fat, and fiber content. Depending on your age, weight, and height, weight watchers tells you how many points you should consume in a day. In addition, you get a number of flex points each week, for when you have to fudge (sometimes literally). You can also earn activity points with exercise to supplement your food points. Weight watchers online is easy to navigate, with practically no commercial clutter. The recipe and restaurant resources are useful, but there is no option for generating a weekly shopping list.

Other Resources

FearFighter

A recent article in the British Journal of Psychiatry reported on excellent results using this telephone and email therapy resource for people suffering from panic, anxiety or phobias. It costs about 500$ for 13 weeks of treatment. This is certainly an excellent resource for those who can't find good quality cognitive behaviorally based therapy for these common disorders.

Online Psychotherapy

We can't really comment on whether this is good psychotherapy. But we do know that the website that this link comes from is well regarded. Having tried internet and telephone therapy, we still think that in person is much better, but for those who can't find a therapist nearby that is good, it might be worth trying. If you do we would love to hear your candid comments.

Basics of "Ki"

This is a very elegant resource that outlines the basic principles of Aikido. Included are some remarkable video clips that demonstrate powerful relaxation and breathing techniques.

Learning Meditation

A very useful site for those interested in learning more about meditation techniques.

Authentic Breathing Resources.

This site provides a fair amount of free information on how breathing exercises can reduce anxiety. It also provides access to an excellent manual available for purchase.

Progressive Relaxation Program

This is an excellent resource for developing a program of Progressive Muscle Relaxation, which is the foundation of treatment for many anxiety disorders.

Learning to Relax.

This is another good site for information about relaxation exercises.

Anger Management

This commercial website offers a surprising amount of useful information on how to control anger, and also on the high costs of not doing so.

Answers for Those Dealing with Loss: Beyond Indigo
This is a remarkable internet site that deals in a comprehensive and compassionate way with all of the things that those who are dealing with loss. Beyond Indigo, is the web's leading source of information on grief, grieving, death and dying. Beyond Indigo offers detailed and heartfelt support and well-managed information. It facilitates chat rooms and discussions on various topics.

Divorce Central

This website was highly recommended by a group of national mental health experts. It is comprehensive, thoughtfully laid out, and answers legal and psychological questions that come up in the context of this turbulent and potentially traumatic event.

Overeaters Anonymous

OA is modeled on the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-Step program of recovery. OA is not a diet-and-calories club. It is a worldwide organization -- men and women, young and old -- who are seeking relief and recovery from addiction to food.

AASF - The AA website with the comprehensive meeting schedule for San Francisco and links to other Bay Area counties meetings. Very complete.

SFNA - The Narcotics Anonymous website for SF. Also a very complete meeting schedule

womenforsobriety.org - We think this is really worth reading. Women for Sobriety is a peer support groups for women in substance abuse recovery. It is non-12-step oriented, but has a very empowering message.

Prescription Medication Savings

DestinationRx.Com

This is a site that allows you to compare costs of medications from different internet sources.

RxDrugCard

This is one of the best of the prescription drug savings cards, it costs about 45.95$ per year for an individual or 49.95$ for a family and allows you to go to any one of 52,000 pharmacies and pay prices that are about the same as the lowest warehouse store price.

Indigent Pharmacy Programs

This site is a nice source of information about the various programs provided by different manufacturers of medications.

San Francisco Department of Health Website

SFDPH has just created (June 2004) a new webpage with information about purchasing prescription medications from Canada. Note that Canadian pharmacies are not all the same price and neither are they necessarily less expensive than a US online pharmacy.

Insurance Resources

Here are a couple of sites that have useful information about health insurance resources:

Insurance Consumer Guide

HealthCareCoach