 |
Navigating the Mental Health Internet |
Introduction to Course
|
|||||||||||
During the bulk of my 25 year career in psychology, I have not been heavily involved in technology. My main area of research and clinical interest has been religious and spiritual issues in mental health, particularly spiritual crises that are all too often mistaken for mental disorders (see my site Spiritual Emergency Resource Center). In 1994 my work in this area came to fruition when the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) included a category entitled Religious or Spiritual Problem (V62.61) of which I was a co-author. In 1995, I commenced writing an article on resources available for assessing and treating religious and spiritual problems.. I was amazed at the depth of resources online even back then at the beginning of the World Wide Web (only 3 years old then)--from rare Buddhist texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls to discussion groups on spirituality in healthcare. I was sold on the power of the Internet for knowledge acquisition and sharing, and began the process of becoming an Internet maven. Since then I have given presentations about the Internet at APA Meetings and several other conferences, and written journal articles and a book on the Mental Health Internet. Since I also do most of my academic work on the Internet as a Professor of Psychology at Saybrook Graduate School where I teach online courses. I average 30-40 hours online a week, so I qualify as a wired or Internet-addicted psychologist, depending on your perspective.
This course is designed to teach mental health professionals the search and navigation skills necessary to use the Internet as a powerful communication and information technology tool. The Internet contains over 1.7 billion Web pages, including vast archives of mental health resources. But with no bibliographic control standards such as those which guide the print world, the Mental Health Internet is difficult to navigate. This course provides hand-on training in Internet search strategies and tools. The course begins with basic navigation training, followed by an Internet Guided tour of clinical resources available for working with patients with substance abuse, PTSD, medical illnesses, depression, and other problems. The next lesson covers search skills to obtain a wide variety of mental health information and resources. In addition, the clinical topics of online therapy, technostress, and Internet addiction are covered. At the end of the course, you will be a confident Internet searcher who can find resources necessary to stay up with developments in themental health field.
At the end of this course, you will be able to:
Instructions for Taking This Course The lessons for this course are online. For ease of access, bookmark the Navigating the Mental Health Internet homepage, although you can always access it from the Internet Guided Learning homepage. Once you start the course, the home page will stay on your desktop and each lesson opens into a new window. So when you are finished with a lesson, just close that window. The same with web sites you visit. They open into a new window so close their window when you are done. You can move to the next lesson by clicking on the Next Lesson link at the bottom of each lesson page, or the lesson links at the top of each lesson page, or from the homepage.. .Most of the time you will be visiting sites on the World Wide Web, a part of the Internet. Thus you will need to have online access most of the time during the course. You can print them out for even easier reading off-line, and then go back online to visit the links. None of the sites in this course charge for using their resources.
Course Links
Four types of links are used in the course.
The Globe, the Speaker, and the Book represent different types of resources that are also part of the course. Look them over although they do not involve quiz or quest exercises. The links that are underlined in the body of the text are there as references if you want to check them out, such as the link to Webquest.
Collecting CE requires filling out the CE Quiz Form and paying the tuition fee of $89. You can register and fill out the Online CE Quiz Form (includes a secure form for credit card payment). Or you an print out the CE Quiz Form and fill it in as you work your way through the course. Then mail or fax it to Internet Guided Learning (instructions are on the form). Include the tuition fee of $89 by check or credit card number. Your certificate awarding 8 hours of CE will be e-mailed to you.
You can contact the instructor, Dr. David Lukoff, via email or by phone at 888.880.2870. You only need to have access to a computer with Internet service and a browser such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer (which you must have to be reading this!) This course is free to preview. If prepayment is made, then a full refund is available at any point for any reason up until CE is awarded. Full refund is also available if your state board does not accept the type of CE that Internet Guided Learning awards. Contact the instructor, Dr. David Lukoff, via email or by phone at 888.880.2870 to request a refund..
Can't get to a link
Course Outline and Suggested Times There is some flexibility as to how to spend your time. For example, if you already know how to use search engines, then you need not spend much time on lesson3.1 and can devote more attention to learning other search skills. Many lessons include search exercises. You should allow 30 minutes at the end to complete the quiz and quest search exercises and the evaluation form if you are taking this course for CE credit. The expectation is that you will spend 8 hours total on this course.
|
|||||||||||
conduct searches on the Internet for research and clinical articles
 |
 |