Counselling, Psychotherapy and Mental Health Resources on the Web, Page 1

This mixed list includes just a few of the myriad counselling and psychotherapy resources available online which may be useful to clients, practitioners or researchers. Unlike some large directories that use automated systems to enable webmasters to submit their sites — which we’re then told will be ‘professionally reviewed’ (uh huh) — every site in our list has been personally visited and evaluated. What you read about a site is not what the site owner submitted on a form or a reciprocal link request: it’s my own personal assessment of the site.

= Star Pick.

Charities and Listening Services

• Befrienders International – International charity with a focus on suicide and depression.
• Cruse Bereavement Care – UK-based charity offering support at times of bereavement.
• Mental Health Foundation – UK-based charity covering mental health very broadly.
• Mind – Also known as the National Association for Mental Health, Mind is the leading mental health charity in England and Wales. Includes many useful advice booklets.
• Relate – Leading UK-based organization for relationship counselling, psychosexual therapy and mediation.
• The Samaritans – This international organization provides telephone and email listening services in several countries.
• Shaw Trust – Support services in the workplace, including for those suffering from mental ill health.
• Victim Support – This charity provides support and information to people coping with the effects of crime.

Evidence Based Care

These sites do not focus exclusively on counselling and psychotherapy but nonetheless provide information which may be useful to counsellors and psychotherapists interested in evidence based care.

• Centre for Health Information Quality – Aims to help providers of health information to ensure high standards.
• Cochrane Collaboration – Reputed to be an exceptional international source of evidence on health care effectiveness, I have unfortunately had some difficulty actually connecting to the main website.
• Healthcare Commission – The Healthcare Commission has taken over from the Commission for Health Improvement as the independent body assessing NHS effectiveness.
• i-Medicine.info – Not specifically counselling focused by any means, but useful resource for evidence-based care.
• National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health – One of the collaborating centres established by the UK’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence.
• National Institute for Clinical Excellence – The UK’s NICE seems to be down frequently, unfortunately.
• NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination – Hosted at the University of York, this site provides a central repository of research evidence on a wide range of health care areas.

General Psychology and Mental Health

This section also includes a few general health sites offering a significant psychology or mental health component.

• AllPsych Online – Nice collection of psychology reference materials, online tests and quizzes, career information, and more.
• AmoebaWeb – Broad resources including history, sport psychology, states of consciousness, and more.
• Articles, Research & Resources in Psychology – Despite the plain-sounding name, this site by psychologist Ken Pope is a terrific resource for practitioners in psychological fields, offering a particular emphasis on ethics and practice.
• Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies – University of Sheffield guide to internet resources.
• CyberPsychLink – Infrequently updated but broad set of resources.

Try Online Counseling: Get Personally Matched

• Emory University MedWeb – General health sciences site with broad but not always deep coverage of mental health.
• ERIC/CASS – ERIC Counseling and Student Services Clearinghouse at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro covers counselling with a largely educational focus.
• Guide to Psychology – Deceptively large, this site provides a robust collection of information focused on clinical psychology.
• HealingWell.com – General health site, includes information on living with chronic illness.
• Healthlinks.net – Broad health coverage with oodles of links to other sites.
• Internet Mental Health – Don’t be fooled by the garish colours: this site offers excellent content, including medication profiles and associated research information.
• Med411.com – Broad medical search engine including psychology resources.
• Medical/Pharmaceutical/Mental Health Resources – A broader site with garish design but useful links.
• Mental Health and Psychiatry Practice Guidelines – This collection from the University of Adelaide offers one of the best lists of best practice guidelines; click up one level from the page for links to other resources in mental health (some of which are local to the University).
• OMNI Psychiatry and Psychology Listing – Massive list of mental health links from the University of Nottingham which is slightly difficult to use only because it is a flat list, without structure.
• Online Dictionary of Mental Health – Includes a long list of links to other sites.
• PsychCentral – One of the oldest psychology sites around, this site has now been largely replaced in its original leadership role by more modern upstarts.
• PsychLinks – Site provides a large directory of resources in psychology and self-help.
• PsychNet-UK – Unfortunately, this once leading UK-based psychology resource site is now mostly an out of date ghost town.
• Psychotherapy.net – Includes videos and DVDs, as well as articles for CE credits.
• PsychWeb – Useful psychology links and also includes the full text of two books by Freud and James which are now in the public domain.

• news and research
• online mental health
• overviews & guides
• therapy