Northern County Psychiatric Associates

Psychiatric Services For Children, Adolescents, Adults and Families

Baltimore, Maryland
410-329-2028

Attention Deficit Disorder
Adult AD/HD
Children & Adolescents
Medication
Organization Skills
School

Depression
Children & Adolescents
Adults
Medication
Postpartum
Seasonal Depression

Bipolar Disorder
Family Issues
Medication

Anxiety
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Body Dysmorphic Disorder
Panic
Agoraphobia
Separation Anxiety Disorder

Medication
Specific Medications
Free Medication Programs

Women's Mental Health
Postpartum Depression
PMS
Menopause
AD/HD
 

For Kids and Teens
Depression
Anxiety
Family therapy
Phobias

Dementia

Mental Health Book Reviews

Bereavement

Managed Care Humor

Our Privacy Policy

Use the Internet for Medical and Psychiatric Research

     The web can be a good source of information about psychiatric conditions and other mental health issues. Since it is so easy and inexpensive to put information up on the World Wide Web, a wide variety of information is present. Often it is necessary to carefully evaluate the source of the data. Both professionals and the general public now have easy access to legitimate medical information as well as inaccurate and misleading material. To make optimal use of the World Wide Web, you need to be able to do your own information searches. Don't think that you need to immediately master the kind of complex search logic used by medical librarians. There are different types of web searches with different levels of complexity. Some are more suited for intuitive thinkers and other more analytical minds. In some cases, you can combine two different basic search techniques in the course of a single search.

     This may sound dry, but in practice it can be exciting, fun and even amusing. One can fantasize about sitting in a conference with a plugged in laptop, pulling up scads of relevant articles and questioning the presenter about them. Some fantasies need to stay just that. Don't actually do this or you will never get invited anywhere. Just sit in back with your laptop and grin.

     A good basic  approach involves web search  engines such as Altavista or Ask Jeeves which have the capacity to do a "natural language search."  One simply enters a question such as"What are the causes of schizophrenia?" The search engine would then list sites with articles about the causes of schizophrenia. If you then wanted to narrow the search to theories related to genetic causes of schizophrenia, many search engines then allow you to press a "refine" or "narrow search" button. In this case, you might want to enter "genetic" to narrow the search. I tend to get to know the technique and general "feel" for one or two general search sites. Google is also an excellent search site which offers a variety of ways to formulate searches.
     If you need more technical articles on schizophrenia, or other medical/psychiatric topic from the medical or educational literature, there are several major indexes to consider. The National Library of Medicine, gives access to free searches of the Index Medicus, a large number of internationally known medical journals. ERIC is a large index of educational journals. CEC Eric Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted Education is devoted to issues related to disabilities and gifted education.

     Several web search engines such as Google and Atlavista offer a translation system that will translate a web site into your language. One can enter text for translation get a web site translated. This can be useful if one accesses web sites or online journals in French, Italian, Portuguese, German Spanish or other languages. It seemed to do a good job when tested with some simple German translation, but one should probably not make important medical decisions based on these translations alone.

     Medline and some sections of Eric use Boolean Search Operators. Basic information on Boolean Search Operators   would be enough for most searches. For those who wish to do powerful or complex searches, the National Library of Medicine has a page, Syntax of Complex Boolean Expression  which gives more detail for those who wish to do advanced Boolean searches.

 
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Treating Girls and Women with AD/HD

Anger: A Family Toxin
 

Is It Still Safe to Treat Kids with Antidepressants?

Why Do I Take So Many Medications?

What's New in Our Practice