Links – Medication for mental illness

Pharmacological interventions and psychotherapy support

Special note: Resources preceded by “‡” are considered especially useful for site visitors who are not mental health professionals.

There is an enormous amount of information available about medications – and much of it is on the Internet. It’s simply overwhelming. One must be careful to attend to research-based information, provided by credentialed professionals. Consumer opinion may be interesting, and even useful, but may well not to be a balanced view or predict well what YOUR experience with a medication will be. Below are some of the sources I think are the very best. My favorites are in bold font.

• Drugs @ FDA – An excellent source for information on the approval status of drugs, but not at all useful for usage information. Of limited value to most consumers and professionals, but rather unique in the information it provides. See also the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research

• ‡ Drugs.com -Drugs & Medications – “Information is available for both consumers and health care professionals on over 24,000 prescription and over the counter medicines.” Fairly generous in the level of information given.

• Drugs, Brains and Behavior – A complete text on the subject, available on line. The catch is that the information is about 20 years old. However, general principals don’t change that quickly, and for that you may find this quite useful.

• ‡ Drug digest.org – Drug Library – Well organized, broad coverage, with reasonable level of detail. An excellent site for consumers.

• ‡ MedicineNet.com – An excellent general resource for medication information. Authorship is explicit, and authoritative (pharmacists, physicians). Coverage is not limited to medications for mental illness.

• ‡ Psychopharmacology – This Wikipedia article, like all of them, should be read with caution. Authorship is essentially unknown, and accountability is negligible for that reason. General principles, and some of the links, may be quite useful to you, however. Read, too, the associated “discussion” page, to check up on ongoing disputes about the information provided.

• ‡ RxList – the Internet Drug Index – Broad, detailed information. One of my top choices for consumers and professionals. Quite useful, if you’re willing to click through the pages, because the information for a given medication is NOT presented on a single page.

• RxMed.com – “Prescription information for over 3000 medications.” Also offers information about herbal treatments and dietary supplements. Information is fairly detailed and technical.