One year after the original BrainTalk Communities disappeared from the web, the domain BrainTalk.org was sold at auction yesterday for $2200. Although rights to the domain could have been retained for less than $10 — or even sold to raise money for the group — it was instead left to expire by the same folks who still hold the keys to the now-inaccessible database containing over 1 million contributions by the nearly 50,000 members of the original support group for sufferers of neurological disorders.

The American Medical Association decided this week not to press ahead with a recommendation to the American Psychiatric Association that video game addiction be labelled as a formal mental health disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The association also decided against urging parents to limit children to a total of two hours per day of playing video games, watching television and surfing the Internet.

Too many people have had to wait too long to access our online counselling services — with our waiting list stretching out to 7 weeks recently. Today, we welcome our first Associate Online Counsellor, Sarah Hayes, whose practice is now featured in our online counselling service section. Welcome, Sarah, and we hope this will mean fewer people having to wait for the services they want!

Many thanks to Dr Gareth Furber for giving our new free blogging service a ‘splash’ over at his site. Dr Furber highlighted the new site’s features and advertising model and commented on the potential of BlogsInMind.com as a journaling and therapeutic writing tool.

Our new resident Consulting Psychologist now has his own regular column: Ask the Psychologist. If you’re looking for feedback on a relationship, worried about a friend or family member, or just curious about something you’ve always wanted to ask a psychologist, Dr Carver is here to listen and offer you some thoughts.

How long does it take to complete one million words of online counselling and online therapy? If you’re Managing Editor Greg Mulhauser, it apparently takes a little less than 3 years. A few weeks ago, the total volume of counselling emails between Mulhauser and his clients surpassed one million words — apparently making Mulhauser the first online practitioner in the history of the field to document this volume of individual online therapeutic work.

Is the amount of time you spend online impacting negatively on your well-being? According to the first nationwide study attempting to quantify ‘internet addiction’ in the general population, between 6 percent and 14 percent of computer users say they spend too much time with online activities, to the detriment of work, relationships, and even food and sleep.