Mood  Disorder  Links

  
MDSG is a member of the Depressive and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA). Prior to August 2002, DBSA was known as the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association (National DMDA). They have local chapter listings by which you can locate affiliated support groups throughout the country.

Locally, there is a New Jersey chapter, the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance Morristown Area (DBSA Morristown). They can be reached at (973)994-1143. Like MDSG, they too have a lecture series - the schedule is on their site. 

For other groups in New Jersey, contact the New Jersey Self-Help Group Clearinghouse at www.njgroups.org. They refer people to over a dozen depression groups. 

Some people with bipolar disorder also suffer from ADD. There is a Manhattan Adult ADD Support Group (which is not affiliated with MDSG).
  
 

The PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer discussed the quality of health information on the Web on May 24, 2001. 

The Health On the Net Foundation (HON) is a not-for-profit International Swiss Organization. HON's mission is to guide lay persons or non-medical users and medical practitioners to useful and reliable online medical and health information. 

A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (May 22, 2001) reviewed health web sites for 4 conditions, one of them depression. The best depression web site for coverage and accuracy of information was from the National Institute for Mental Health (www.nimh.nih.gov).

When Web Sites Play Doctor How to spot the snake oil on e-health sites. Business Week Magazine August 14, 2000. This article is available on the Business Week web site only to subscribers to the magazine. The article mentions a web site devoted to separating good online health information from bad, Quackwatch.com where you can find evaluations of good and bad medical web sites. 

  

  
The New York Times maintains web pages with depression links for men and one for women. In addition, sections of their web site are devoted to Mental Health and Behavior,  Mental Health and Disorders and Depression.

Google has a web site directory in addition its search engine. MDSG is listed under Depression support groups along with other support groups. There is a topic devoted to Mood Disorders.

Medical Information on the Internet has links for Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Mood Disorders and more.

The Doctor's Guide web site has depression related links. 

There are a number of sections of interest on Yahoo's web site. They cover mental health in their full coverage section which has news stories, related web sites, links to magazine articles, editorials and more. Yahoo Health has a listing of Diseases and Conditions that includes sections on Depressive Disorders and Mood Disorders. Also, their home page of Yahoo Health has a drug search box near the top of the page. The drugs and medications section has a topic on Antidepressants. The Health centers area has a topic on Depression. 

The Resources and Links page of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (formerly the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association) has links to Mental Health Associations and Foundations, Federal Agencies and Other Informational Sites. 

HealthWeb provides links to evaluated information resources selected by librarians and information professionals at academic medical centers in the Midwest. Look for Psychiatry/Psychology.

The Mental Health Association in New York State has a large collection of links. You can also call their Mental Health Information Center at 800-766-6177.

Physicians Postgraduate Press publishes journals and their web site has Links to Web Sites of Interest to Mental Health Professionals.

The medical advisor to MDSG, Dr. Ivan Goldberg maintains the very popular web site Depression Central.

Depression & Mental Health, A Harvard Health Report is available from Better Homes and Gardens magazine.

 

  
The Food and Drug Administration maintains Daily Med System with information on dosage guidelines, side effects and the package inserts for prescription drugs.

Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs started in December 2004. 

Another pill review web site, from Public Citizen's Health Research Group is www.worstpills.org 

Check out drug interactions at Drug Digest from Express Scripts and the St. Louis College of Pharmacy.

RxList lets you check the accuracy of medical advice and prescriptions. See if you actually got what the doctor ordered by searching for a description of the pills or tablets. Instead of generic instructions supplied by pharmacy computers, read the source material. Check the interaction warnings yourself. Drugs can be searched for by name, keyword, and imprint code.

InteliHealth from Johns Hopkins University has a section of their web site with drug information.

WebMD is a web site devoted to health information with a prescription drug reference section. They also have forums on mental health that are moderated by doctors. 

Discovery Health has a section with drug information and a section with drug interactions.

Drugs.com provides drug information including drug interactions, a Pill Identification wizard and a pill image library. 

Search for drug interactions a www.drugstore.com. 

DrugDigest, is the consumer web site of Express Scripts a pharmacy benefits manager. They provide drug interaction information. 

Reuters Health has an online drug database

You can do some comparison shopping for prescription drugs at DestinationRx. At the top of their home page is a function to compare prices for drugstore items. Enter the name of a drug here. It searches the prices of only a handful of web based drugstores, but some price comparison information is better than none. It might be that your local drugstore has an excellent price. 

People taking multiple prescriptions may need help keeping track of what to take and when to take it. To meet this need, there is a web site called www.safedose.com. All the pills you take for each time of day are arranged in a single plastic packet. Quoting from their web site: "Safe Dose organizes your medications at the pharmacy. Your pills are inserted into easy open individual packets organized in sequence by day, date, dose and time to improve convenience and reduce the risk of medication errors. With Safe Dose, your medications are delivered directly to your door". MDSG has no relationship with this web site and does not endorse it. 

Buying Prescription Medicines Online: A Consumer Safety Guide  Some basic do's and don'ts about purchasing medicines online from the FDA. They also list drug recalls and safety related labeling changes on their MedWatchsite.

 

  
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is dedicated to advancing our knowledge of suicide and our ability to prevent it. They provide information and education about depression and suicide and are non-profit.

National Hopeline Network A 24-hour crisis hotline; also publishes the journal Preventing Suicide. 

National Institute of Mental Health Suicide Research Consortium Administers research grants and disseminates information about suicide.

Suicide Prevention www.criseslink.org  

Our medical advisor, Dr. Ivan Goldberg has a web page on Suicide and its prevention.

Frequently Asked Questions about Suicide from NIMH.

The National Library of Medicine has a section of their site devoted to Suicide

The American Association of Suicidology promotes research, public awareness, and education for professionals and volunteers. Publishes a quarterly journal and newsletters.

Important Suicide Organizations from PreventSuicideNow.com

One of our members has a list of suicide related web sites. 

The 24 hour suicide hot line is (212) 673-3000.
  

 

Overcoming Depression is a public interest website focused on depression help and advice.

The Bipolar Family Treatment Center is part of the Psychiatry Department at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan, in New York City.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). If you think you suffer from winter depression, there is a Personalized Inventory for Depression and SAD test at the website of the Center for Environmental Therapeutics, www.cet.org. The site has a detailed description of light and ion therapy.

The Mayo Clinic has a medical web site that includes articles on depression. Find the latest articles about depression at MayoClinic.com.

The Psychiatry department at Columbia University has a web site that includes an Ask The Experts section where they accept questions from anyone. They also have an events calendar that lists free lectures.

The Mood Disorders Research Program at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York performs studies of chronic depression.

Depression Fallout is a web site by Anne Sheffield author of three books on depression, oriented to the impact on Friends and Family.

BP magazine started in the Fall of 2004, providing "Hope and Harmony for People With Bipolar". It is published 4 times a year, each issue is $5.

The Harvard Mental Health Newsletter is not free, but a handful of articles are available on their web site. 

WebMD is another web site devoted to health information with a section devoted to depression, called the WebMD Depression Health Center. It has articles on diagnosis, symptoms, treatment and the prevention of Depression. They also have the WebMD Mental Health Center with information and news on Mental Health.

The American Psychiatric Association  

Depression Evaluation Service from the New York Psychiatric Institute  

Depression and Related Affective Disorders Association

National Foundation for Depressive Illness

McLean Hospital Mental Health Treatment Service & Research for Boston, MA and the World

McMan's Depression and Bipolar Web. A one-person site devoted to depression and bipolar disorder, with over 170 articles, 150 links, and news - from diagnosis and treatment to personal stories and essays. Also available is McMan's Depression and Bipolar Weekly, an online newsletter.

Reuters Health web site has sections for news and drug information (see above). They also have two very long and detailed reports from Well-Connected. One is on Depression (from December 2001), the other on Bipolar Disorder (June 2001). This is how WELL-CONNECTED describes their reports: "Each report is an in-depth discussion of the latest information on treatments, risk factors, causes, diagnostic tests, and preventative measures. All reports are written by experienced medical writers and reviewed for accuracy and relevancy by a board of physicians at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital."

The web site psychguides.com has an Expert Consensus Guideline series. They are practical clinical guidelines for treating the major mental disorders and are based on a wide survey of the best expert opinion. Among the reports are Medication Treatment of Bipolar Disorder, Guide for Patients and Families (regarding Bipolar Disorder), Depression in Older Adults: A Guide for Patients and Families and Treatment of Depression in Women.

Along the same line as psychguides, is the National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) which exists to: "provide health professionals and others an accessible mechanism for obtaining objective, detailed information on clinical practice guidelines". They are sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in partnership with the AMA and the American Association of Health Plans. You can view their guidelines for depressive disorders and read their Practice guideline for the treatment of patients with major depressive disorder.

The Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation (CABF) is a parent-led, not-for-profit, web-based membership organization of families raising children diagnosed with, or at risk for, early-onset bipolar disorder. 

The Journal Of Clinical Psychiatry is, for the most part, not available to the public for free. However, they do offer selected full text supplements, many of which cover depression. Among the recent supplements are: Safety Profiles of Mood Stabilizers, Antipsychotics, and Broad-Spectrum Psychotropics (2002), Management of Treatment-Resistant Depression (2001), and Depression: The Relevance of the Time Factor (2001).  Each of these supplements consists a handful of articles that can be downloaded individually. For example, the last one contains an article called Do Some Antidepresants Work Faster Than Others?  Note that each research paper is an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) document.

Famous People Who Have Experienced Depression or Manic Depression. The purpose of the list is to provide inspiration for those with mood disorders. One list is of living celebrities who have publicly stated that they have experienced manic depression or depression in their lives and includes an MDSG facilitator. Another list is of deceased celebrities from the 20th Century who spoke publicly about their mental illnesses, or had them documented in biographies. There is another list of Famous People with Mood Disorders.

InteliHealth from Johns Hopkins University has a section of their web site devoted to Mental Health which includes sections on  Depression and Bipolar Disorder. There is also a section with drug information. They also partner with another health web siteDiscoveryHealth, which has an Ask-the-Doctor column for mental health questions, an archive of mental health articles. 

The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy has a section on mood disorders.

The American  Psychiatric Association has a section of their web site devoted to Public Information. Included there are a series of online pamphlets they call the "Let’s Talk Facts About..." series which has pamphlets on Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Teen Suicide and more. The public information section also has a booklet called Facts About Postpartum Depression (Adobe Acrobat PDF Format). The Clinical Resources section of the web site has a pamphlet called: Treatment works. Major depressive disorder: a patient and family guide (Adobe Acrobat PDF Format). 

The Medical Letter is "a peer-reviewed publication, offering unbiased critical evaluations of new drugs." Not free.

Depressive and Related Affective Disorders Association (DRADA). A community organization that serves individuals affected by a depressive illness, family members, health care professionals and the general public. They provide education, information and support about depressive disorders and work in cooperation with the Psychiatry Department at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. 

The Depression Evaluation Service in New York City has Frequently Asked Questions about depression. 

There are quite a few depression screening tests available on the web. The following note of caution about them is from the depression-screening.org web site: "Screening tests, such as the one on this web site, are not intended to provide a diagnosis for clinical depression. But they may help identify any depressive symptoms and determine whether a further evaluation by a medical or mental health professional is necessary." Good Housekeeping magazine also has a depression screening test on their web site. If their test indicates that you might be depressed, they provide a toll-free "800" phone number to call a professional that gives you 3 referrals based on the zip code you enter.  

DepressioNet, a depression support group in Australia has a number of articles on their web site. 

About.com (formerly The Mining Company) is a large web site where individual sections are run by expert "guides". They have a section on depression, a section on bipolar disorder and a section on mental health. Each section is run by a different person and includes articles by the guide, links, chat rooms, a newsletter and more. Among the topics in the depression section are a list of web sites related to depression on the job, drug information for commonly used psychiatric medications, a collection of links regarding social security disability for depression and a section on what causes depression. Among the topics in the bipolar section is an introduction to help the newly diagnosed and their friends and families understand what bipolar disorder is all about. There is also a bipolar newsletter with current and old issues online. 

USA Today has a list of their mental health related stories. 

New York City Voices is a journal for mental health consumers, families, and professionals, providing mutual support for living the most empowered and independent lives possible. They have a collection of recovery stories.

OnHealth is one of many web sites devoted to health information. They have a section on depression and another section on bipolar disorder.

Thrive Online is another web site devoted to health information with a topic on depression. They also have a newsstand section with 30 days of health related news stories from Reuters Health. However, this is all health related news, not just mental health.

Pendulum Resources is a web site devoted to Bipolar Disorder.

Dr. Koop is another web site devoted to health information with a topic on depression. There are links there to many online chats regarding various mood disorders. They also have drug information and a drug interaction service that allows you to take the preventive step of determining whether the drugs you are taking interact with each other, or interact with a certain food, and cause a bad reaction. There is both a java interface and a simpler interface to their drug information.

Medscape is another web site devoted to health information. It has a psychiatry section but nothing specific to mood disorders. They have also partnered with CBS on CBSHealthWatch which has a section for Mental Health/Depression.

Mediconsult is another web site devoted to health information that has a topic on depression. 

The Infinite Mind is a  weekly public radio program that focuses on the nature of thought, the science of the brain and mental health — and the subtle, often unfathomable interactions between them. Many of the shows are related to depression. In New York City the show airs on WNYC-AM (820) at 7 a.m. on Sundays. Some of the shows can be heard over the Internet at any time using real audio software. A full list of shows is available. 

Information about Mood Disorders www.healthyplace.com

Anxiety Disorders Association of America

Bipolar Significant Others

The New York Daily News and Healthology have a web page with mental health articles and videos

Information about Electro convulsive Therapy www.schizophrenia.com/family/ect1.html

A cautionary note about Internet health web sites. A survey done in January 2000 found several lapses in maintaining privacy. Many web sites ask or require users to register, either to see additional information or to customize the information presented. Twenty one of the most popular medical information web sites shared personal information with other companies despite a pledge not to do so. Among the offending web sites were drkoop.com, webmd.com, ivillage.com, yahoo.com and onhealth.com. Reuters. February 1, 2000.

 

 
The Food and Drug Administration maintains Daily Med System with information on dosage guidelines, side effects and the package inserts for prescription drugs.

The National Library of Medicine has an easy access web site for general health information. They have sections devoted to Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Suicide and Mental Health. There is also drug information and MEDLINE the world's largest medical library.

The New York State Office of Mental Health creates opportunities for children and adults who have psychiatric disabilities to safely and effectively work toward recovery. Their web site includes information on Kendra's Law (Assisted Outpatient Treatment) and a list of links.
 

National Institute of Mental Health is the Federal agency that supports research nationwide on mental illness and mental health. It is a component of the National Institutes of Health. One section of their web site is devoted to depression and another section is for bipolar disorder. The also have information on St. John’s Wort and a publication called  A Participant's Guide To Mental Health Clinical Research for anyone deciding whether to take part in a mental illness-related research study. Two short articles from NIMH are What To Do When A Friend Is Depressed. . .  (Last updated February 2001) and Depression - What You Need To Know  (Last updated October 2002). A booklet, Medications and Mental Disorders, was completely revised April 2002. It helps those using mental health services to be well informed about medications for mental illnesses. They were cited as being a good depression web site by a study in the Journal of the AMA. You can call them for free brochures on depression and its treatment at 800-421-4211.

  

 
Dr. Ivan K. Goldberg, our medical advisor recommends being very skeptical of online information from anonymous sources.

rxlist.com has unmoderated discussion groups for each prescription drug

wingofmadness.com has discussion forums for sharing experiences

webmd.com has forums on mental health, moderated by doctors

Depression Fallout has message boards for the friends and family of depressives.

Pendulum is an e-mail list
 

 
NARSAD  The National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression raises and distributes funds for scientific research into the causes, cures, treatments and prevention of severe mental illness. Their web site has an  E-mail mailing list, a research newsletter, brochures in Spanish and English and Frequently Asked Questions.

The National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers. Advocating for mental health patients and professionals. They work to address the negative impact of managed care on both patients and professionals in mental health care.

NAMI The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill   is the nation's leading grassroots advocacy organization solely dedicated to improving the lives of persons with severe mental illnesses including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness), major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and severe anxiety disorders.

The National Mental Health Association strives to spread tolerance and awareness, improve mental health services, and prevent mental illness. Their National Public Education Campaign on Clinical Depression, begun in 1993, continues to inform Americans on the symptoms of depression and provide information about treatment. NMHA is also involved in the struggle for parity of mental health benefits with other health coverage.

www.togetherrxaccess.com

www.pparx.org

www.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Helpline1/Prescription_Drug_Patient_Assistance_Programs.htm

www.needymeds.com

www.freemedicineprogram.com

www.medicarerights.org