Provides free abstracts of articles listed in MedLine, together with ordering information for articles. Enter keywords.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed
or
http://www.healthgate.com/HealthGate/MEDLINE/search.shtml

American Journal of Psychotherapy
Devoted to the advancement of psychotherapy and to the continuation of discussions, scientific writings, clinical impressions, and articles of special interest to psychotherapists.

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URL: http://www.ajp.org

Psychiatric Times
One of the better on-line e-journals. Provides four or five feature articles per month, and an opportunity to view the previous issue.

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URL: http://www.mhsource.com/psychiatrictimes.html

Mental Health Source Exclusives
Features a fine collection of columns by practicing psychiatrists and psychologists: Against the Grain by David Kaiser, M.D. ; Chance Thoughts by Sue Chance, M.D. ; Perspectives by Peter D. Kramer, M.D. ; and Psychiatry and Society by Keith Ablow, M.D. These people all have interesting perspectives.

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URL: http://www.mhsource.com/exclusive.html

Harvard Mental Health Letter
This sparse, but useful site includes the table of contents and one feature article per month from the Harvard Mental Health Letter. In March 1997, the feature article provided an insightful review of autism, indicating that a monthly stop would be well worthwhile.

The link below is to the main Harvard Health Publications page.

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URL: http://www.med.harvard.edu/publications/Mental/.index.html

The Consumer Reports Study
Martin E. P. Seligman
University of Pennsylvania

This is an article discussing a Consumer Reports (1995, November) article which concluded that patients benefited very substantially from psychotherapy, that long-term treatment did considerably better than short-term treatment, and that psychotherapy alone did not differ in effectiveness from medication plus psychotherapy. CR also found that no specific mode of psychotherapy did better than any other for any disorder; psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers did not differ in their effectiveness as treaters; and all did better than marriage counselors and long-term family doctoring. Patients whose length of therapy or choice of therapist was limited by insurance or managed care did worse. The methodological virtues and drawbacks of this large-scale survey are examined and contrasted by the author with the more traditional efficacy study, in which patients are randomized into a manualized, fixed duration treatment or into control groups. Seligman concludes that the Consumer Reports survey complements the efficacy method, and that the best features of these two methods can be combined into a more ideal method that will best provide empirical validation of psychotherapy.

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URL: http://www.cmhc.com/articles/seligm.htm

A growing collection of about 60 miscellaneous articles on mental health topics from the e-journal Perspectives (which is easily linked to from this site). These articles stress disorders such as schizophrenia, addiction, anxiety and panic disorders, and Alzheimer's disease.

The parent site, Mental Health Net, at http://www.cmhc.com/mhn.htm is a great source of links to specialized areas and is the home to the MedLine search mirror (see above). Professional Resources are listed at http://www.cmhc.com/prof.htm . However, some of the reviews appear to be in need of revision and update; not surprising, given the huge number of them.

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URL: http://www.cmhc.com/archives/readmnu.htm

Mental Health Net Search Engine

Transpersonal Psychology

Transpersonal psychology, often called "fourth force" psychology, is concerned with questions of value, meaning, purpose, and spirit, while studying human beings in their complex familial, social, ecological, global, and even cosmic contexts. It is a psychological discipline that focuses on the spiritual aspects of suffering, healing and growth and its best-known popular manifestation is Daniel Goleman's bestseller Emotional Intelligence.

A highly visible location on the Web is the Association for Transpersonal Psychology.

Institute of Transpersonal Psychology

The Mind's Eye

The "Mind's Eye," published by the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, is a collection of writings and images "which explore how spirituality and psychology come together, and overlap, yielding a new field of exploration drawing from the scientific understandings of psychology as well as the deep yearnings of the soul and the quest of the spirit." A recent issue featured poetry and literature as well as the following clinical articles:

• William Braud, PhD: "Thoughts on Research and Clinical Practice"
• Melissa Beacham: "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not: God, Spiritual Development and Recovery from Childhood Trauma"
• Michael S. Hutton: "Trees as Spiritual Teachers"

The site hasn't been updated in a while, however.

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URL: http://www.tmn.com/itp/mindseye.html

This is the home page of the Family Psychiatric Center in Omaha, Nebraska and is designed to provide information useful in rapid treatment of emotional problems that are not associated with major disorders. There are disclaimers warning people who are "suffering from a severe psychiatric disorder" not to use information on the site without supervision by a mental health professional and continual reminders that the approach used here is empirically based.

Based upon twenty years of treatment experience, the center uses an "interpersonal orientation" and "five basic questions" to help reduce "stress and mental dysfunction." These questions are "designed to expose the (often denied) impact that others have had on the patient and on the formation of each one of his/her emotional traits," and have been refined from the use of up to one hundred similar questions.

The Five Questions Are:

1. Where have I had this feeling?
2. Who makes me feel this way?
3. Who, in my place, would be feeling this way?
4. What else is being lumped in together (what else is wrong)?
5. What is not wrong (count as many blessings as possible every day )

They are said to be effective in relieving "high levels of stress, tension, guilt, frustration, loneliness, sadness, intimidation, anxiety, intrapsychic disorganization, indecisiveness, low self esteem, anger, etc., especially when these feelings have been or are an overreaction to an average interpersonal situation and are not chronic, scrambled, compounded, or a response to a real life tragedy or to an ongoing emotional duress." They are also used by the clinic in relieving cravings.

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URL: http://www.frt.com

Albert Ellis's controversial REBT (rational-emotive belief therapy) is perhaps best reserved for consideration by those who are having minor problems accepting change. It primarily involves the vigorous disputing of "irrational" beliefs using a question-answer technique, and replacing them with "healthy" beliefs, which are helpfully provided by Ellis. Despite the charming (and apparently persuasive) simplicity of this therapy, it is still worth a look, and this site provides a new "Featured Essay" by Ellis or one of his minions every month. The FAQ section helpfully provides distillations of the major criticisms of REBT. Whether or not the questions are answered satisfactorily depends upon the reader's point of view, of course.

Like any controversial "self-help" therapy that involves operant conditioning, the consumer is wise to do some investigating before jumping in.

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URL: http://www.rebt.org