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Significant recent research findings
- Reiki: Learning to do it
A spiritual psychology column by Bernard Starr for ReligionAndSpirituality.com
February 8, 2007
- Reiki: A healing touch
A spiritual psychology column by Bernard Starr for ReligionAndSpirituality.com.
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Glossaries of terms used in mental health and non-conventional medicine
- Interactive
Glossary of Mental Health and Disability Terms This site provides a list of
frequently used health, mental health and disability terms that are defined in
clear and simple everyday language.
- Alternative
Medicine Terms This site provides a comprehensive list of terms, modalities
and specific brands of non-conventional medical products and includes hypertext
links to relevant phytochemical and ethnobotanical databases.
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Clinical practice guidelines for the conventional
treatment of mental health problems
- www.library.nhs.uk/mentalhealth
This is the site of the National Electronic Library for Health of the
U.K.'s National Health Service. This site is intended to provide comprehensive
information on the range of conventional treatments for mental health problems.
There is no fee. There are links to patient resources. The site includes
guidelines and treatment appraisals, Cochrane systematic reviews, and a compendium
of best practice articles (including Clinical Evidence chapters and WHO
guidelines for mental health in primary care).
- http://www.guideline.gov/
This very useful site contains summaries of,
and links to, over 50 different sets of practice guidelines covering a range of
mental health diagnoses and issues.
- www.psychguides.com This site contains practical clinical
recommendations for the conventional treatment of common mental health problems
based on expert consensus. The Expert Consensus Guidelines present
practical clinical recommendations based on a survey of expert opinions. The
guidelines are based on both research and clinical expertise. While the
guidelines are comprehensive they emphasize medications over psychotherapy and
other conventional treatments.
- http://www.psych.org/psych_pract/treatg/pg/prac_guide.cfm
This site is sponsored by the American Psychiatric Association and includes
full text of many (but not all) of the practice guidelines developed by this
organization. Topics include: Psychiatric Evaluation of Adults, Bipolar
Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder in Adults, Eating Disorders, Substance Use
Disorders (Alcohol, Cocaine, Opioids), Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias
of Late Life, Schizophrenia, and Nicotine Dependence.
- http://www.mhmr.state.tx.us/centraloffice/medicaldirector/TMAPtoc.html
This site is sponsored by the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental
Retardation, contains detailed treatment recommendations ("The Texas
Medication Algorithm Project " or TMAP) for each of three major disorders
(schizophrenia, bipolar disorder; and major depressive disorder).
- http://www.asam.org/publ/withdrawal.htm
This site consists of a meta-analysis and evidence-based practice guideline
developed by the American Society of Addiction Medicine, Committee on Practice
Guidelines, Working Group on Pharmacological Management of Alcohol Withdrawal.
- http://www.state.sc.us/dmh/clinical/port.htm
This is the site of an article published in the Schizophrenia Bulletin which
contains a comprehensive set of guidelines for the conventional biomedical
treatment of schizophrenia. Development of these "Patient Outcomes
Research Team" (PORT) guidelines was funded by NIMH. 18 of the
recommendations address antipsychotic agents and other conventional drug
treatments. The remaining 12 recommendations address other conventional
treatments of schizophrenia including electroconvulsive therapy, psychological
interventions, family interventions, vocational rehabilitation, and intensive
case management.
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General resources on non-conventional medicine
- http://www.pitt.edu/~cbw/database.html.
This is the Alternative Medicine Homepage, a project coordinated by the staff
of the Falk Library of Health Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The site provides extensive links to reviewed websites on professional
associations, centers of excellence where non-conventional medical care is
available, and databases on many non-conventional treatments. The site includes
links to professional e-bulletin boards and e-journals in many areas of
non-conventional medicine.
- National Center for
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) The National Center for
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is 1 of the 27 institutes and
centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH is one of
eight agencies under the Public Health Service (PHS) in the Department of
Health and Human Services (DHHS). NCCAM is dedicated to exploring
complementary and alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous
science, training complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) researchers, and
disseminating authoritative information to the public and professionals. The NCCAM
citation index contains over 200,000 citations of studies on all areas of
non-conventional medicine indexed in the National Library of Medicine beginning
in 1966. The four primary focus
areas are research, career development, outreach, and integration
non-conventional and conventional approaches.
- Search CAM on PubMed NCCAM and
the National Library of Medicine (NLM) have partnered to create a subset of the
National Library of Medicine's PubMed. A literature search from this website
will automatically be limited to the subset of PubMed pertaining to
non-conventional medicine. PubMed provides access to citations from the MEDLINE
database and additional life science journals. It also includes links to many
full-text articles at journal Web sites and other related Web resources
- CRISP - A Database of
Biomedical Research Funded By the National Institutes of Health (NIH) CRISP
(Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects) is a searchable
database of federally funded biomedical research projects conducted at
universities, hospitals, and other research institutions, including research in
many areas of non-conventional medicine. The database is maintained by the
Office of Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health, and
includes projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMHSA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA),
Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ), and other federal agencies.
The site can be used to search for scientific concepts, emerging trends and
techniques, or to identify specific projects and/or investigators.
- Natural Standard,
The Authority on Integrative Medicine is an excellent resource covering the
range of non-conventional modalities. Natural Standard is
an international research collaboration that aggregates and synthesizes data on
non-conventional therapies. The goal of this collaboration is to provide
objective, reliable information that aids clinicians, patients, and healthcare
institutions in making more informed and safer therapeutic decisions.
- Embase This website is a gateway to
biomedical and pharmacological information pertaining to both conventional and
non-conventional treatments. The site includes but is not limited to MedLine
entries. Approximately 2,000 records are added daily and 600,000 articles are
added annually. It includes many search tools quick to facilitate rapid
identification of relevant clinical or research information, and the user can
generate table-of-content alerts to keep up to date with significant emerging
findings.
- Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM)
includes five databases on non-conventional and integrative medicine
that cover herbal medicines and supplements, clinical information on
integrative approaches, patient education information, a database on herb-drug
and supplement-drug interactions, and referenced monographs on herbal
medicinals.
- The FACTs-Home is the website for the
Friends of Alternative and Complementary Therapies Society. The goal of this
society of healers and patients is to create "a repository of health
information that is factual, accessible, credible and ethical." Information included
in the website comes from different traditions of medicine and different
cultures. FACT is an Associate Member of the Canadian Health Network.
- Trip Database Plus The TRIP (Turning Research into Practice) Database started in
1997 as a small search engine with a focus on evidence-based medicine. The goal
of the TRIP Database is to allow health professionals to easily find the highest-quality
material available on the web on a range of conventional and non-conventional
medical practices. Typically 300-400 new articles are added monthly. The
content of the TRIP Database is separated into a number of categories:
evidence-based medicine; guidelines; query-answering; medical images;
eTextbooks; patient information leaflets; and peer-reviewed journals.
- Alt HealthWatch
provides a gateway to full-text searches of over 100 serials on
all major non-conventional medical approaches. The list is maintained by EBSCO Publishing. EBSCO is a
leading provider of popular secondary databases such as MLA International
Bibliography, CINAHL® , PsycINFO® and others. Extensive use of linking enables
users to access full text information from virtually all library holdings.
- www.rosenthal.hs.columbia.edu
includes a link to the Directory of databases on CAM of the Richard
and Hinda Rosenthal Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine includes
extensive links to reviewed databases on a range of non-conventional modalities.
The site is a powerful gateway to numerous on-line databases covering six major
areas: biomedical bibliographic information; complementary and alternative
medicine; medical, pharmaceutical or scientific data; traditional medicine
systems; therapy- or modality-specific; and clinical trials and research
projects. Brief information on each linked site is included, together with type
of literature covered, and whether the site is fee-based access or free.
- Osher Institute, Harvard Medical
School, Division for research and education in complementary and integrative
medicine The mission of the Harvard Osher Center and the website is to
facilitate interdisciplinary and inter-institutional faculty collaboration for
purposes of: research evaluation of complementary and integrative medical
therapies; delivery of educational programs to the medical community and the
public, and; investigation of the design of sustainable models of complementary
and integrative care delivery in an academic setting.
- UCSF - Osher Center for Integrative Medicine
The mission of the Osher Center for
Integrative Medicine is to search for the most effective treatments for
patients by combining both conventional and alternative approaches that address
all aspects of health and wellness - biological, psychological, social and
spiritual. The Center is working to transform health care by conducting
rigorous research on the medical outcomes of complementary and alternative
healing practices; educating medical students, health professionals and the
public about these practices; and creating new models of clinical care.
- Research Council for Complementary Medicine - RCCM The RCCM was founded in 1983 by practitioners
and researchers from both orthodox and non-conventional systems of medicine. Their
goal is to develop the evidence base for non-conventional medicine in order to
provide both practitioners and patients with information about the
effectiveness of individual therapies and the treatment of specific conditions.
The School of Integrated Health at the University of Westminster hosts the
website.
- Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies FACT is
a quarterly review journal that aims to present the evidence on complementary
and alternative medicine (CAM) in an analytical and impartial manner. With
increasing interest and growing research into non-conventional medicine there
are dozens of specific complementary medicine journals and thousands of general
medical journals that present articles and research findings in this area. Realizing
that it is impossible to scan all pertinent publications, Focus on
Alternative and Complementary Therapies (FACT) systematically searches the
world literature to uncover key articles in CAM research. The most important
factual papers found worldwide are summarised and then critically appraised in
FACT. They are followed by an expert commentary written by a member of FACT's
international editorial board and include a reply from the author of the
original paper. All FACT summaries and commentaries are evidence-based,
reporting clinical trials, systematic reviews or meta-analyses, compiling,
interpreting and disseminating the up-to-date evidence for or against
complementary medicine.
- Log onto The Cochrane Library
This website provides a gateway to The
Cochrane Library, and the Cochrane Field on complementary
and alternative medicine (CAM). The Cochrane CAM Field is coordinated by an
international group of individuals dedicated to creating systematic reviews of
randomized clinical trials in diverse areas of non-conventional medicine
including acupuncture, massage, chiropractic, herbal medicine, homeopathy, mind-body
therapy and other modalities. The Cochrane CAM Field was founded in 1996 and is
coordinated by the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine.
- www.bl.uk/collections/health/amed.html
Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED) produced by the
Medical Information Centre of the British Library, and contains over 100,000
references including 400 biomedical journals.
- Bandolier - Evidence based thinking about healthcare Bandolier is an independent journal about evidence-based
healthcare written by Oxford University scientists. The journal first appeared in
February 1994. It is directed at both healthcare professionals and patients. The
e-journal provides information about evidence of effectiveness in bullit format
based on critical analysis of systematic reviews, meta-analyses and single
randomized controlled trials drawn from the Cochrane Library and PubMed. The electronic version of Bandolier now
has over one million visitors each month from all over the world. Many visitors
are healthcare professionals however Bandolier is also a source of useful
information for patients.
- bmj.com Collected Resources : Complementary Medicine This site provides a
searchable database of articles published in the British Medical Journal
pertaining to complementary and alternative medicine. It is indexed and
cross-referenced.
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Resources for monitoring research in conventional and non-conventional treatments
- NCCAM Grantee
Publications Database This database provides
citations of publications by NCCAM grantees. It covers the results of NCCAM-funded
research. Publications are continuously added to this database. Specific
citations can be found by the principal investigator's last name, title of
article, journal name, grant mechanism, or grant number. Searches can also be
done by key word or phrase contained in the title of the article.
- www.clinicaltrials.gov
This site includes mostly
government-sponsored studies, and is the most comprehensive clinical trials
directory on the internet. The site provides
regularly updated information about federally funded and some privately
supported human clinical trials that are currently in progress, and includes
studies on non-conventional modalities. Data include the purpose of the study,
who may participate, locations, and phone numbers for more details.
- Oregon Center for Complementary and Alternative medicine in neurological disorders
ORCCAMIND is a center without walls committed to research on non-conventional
treatments of neurological disorders. The Center was created in 1999 through
funding from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
(NCCAM), of the National Institutes of Health. Initial studies have examined
treatment approaches using anti-oxidants, yoga, acupuncture and chiropractic
manipulation.
- www.centerwatch.com This site is an excellent resource for
identifying studies sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry or private institutions. The site lists more than 41,000 active
industry and government-sponsored clinical trials, as well as new drug
therapies in research and those recently approved by the FDA. Patients
interested in participating in clinical research can make enquiries about
specific on-going trials.
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Evaluating natural products and selecting brands
- www.naturaldatabase.com
(subscription fee) This website is a valuable resource for both practitioners
and patients. The Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database was released in
September 1999, and is updated daily. The mission of the research and editorial
team at Therapeutic Research Center is to critically evaluate the literature to
produce an objective, evidence-based resource designed for healthcare
professionals. This Database provides a comprehensive listing of brand name
natural product ingredients, and the ingredients of brand name products are
linked to a monograph on the particular ingredient. Clinically relevant
information is in a user-friendly format. Thousands of new references are added
each year, and new interactions and safety concerns are added as soon as they
are recognized. Effectiveness ratings are raised or lowered based on emerging
research findings. There is an interface that permits identification of
potential interactions between a specified natural product, other natural
products, and conventional drugs. A new database and website have recently been
created specifically for patients with the goal of providing patient-friendly
wording on natural medicines. Sections of the patient database can be printed
for patients during sessions.
- www.factsandcomparisons.com
(subscription) Facts and Comparisons is an established information service on
new drug research that has been in existence over five decades.
Its mission is to compile unbiased, essential
and appropriate drug information. Thousands of articles, drug package inserts,
lectures, and other relevant data are culled and edited year round by a
professional panel of pharmacists, physicians and nurses to provide the most
current drug information. The company annually publishes an updated version of
Drug Facts and Comparisons and many other information services as printed
reports.
- http://www.consumerlab.com
(subscription fee) ConsumerLab.com, LLC ("CL") provides independent
test results and information to help consumers and healthcare professionals
evaluate health, wellness, and nutrition products. It publishes results on its
website and in published form in an annually updated book: ConsumerLab.com's
Guide to Buying Vitamins and Supplements, and in technical reports covering a
range of supplements. ConsumerLab is a certification company and enables
companies of all sizes to have their products voluntarily tested for potential
inclusion in its list of Approved Quality products and bear its seal of
approval. In the past five years, CL has tested more than 1,200 products.
Products tested and rated include: herbal products; vitamins and minerals; other
natural product supplements sports and energy products; functional foods; foods
and beverages; and personal hygiene products.
- http://www.nnfa.org The National
Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA) was founded in 1936. Its mission is to
promote the values and shared interests of retailers and suppliers in the
natural nutritional foods and products industry, to safeguard retailers and
suppliers of foods and natural products, and to create standards and procedures
for self-regulation aimed at improving the quality and safety of natural foods,
products, services, and labeling information.
- Http://www.usp.org The United States
Pharmacopeia (USP) is the official public standards-setting authority for all
prescription and over-the-counter medicines, dietary supplements, and other
healthcare products manufactured and sold in the United States. USP is an
independent, science-based public health organization. USP sets standards for
the quality of these products and works with healthcare providers to help them
reach the standards. USP's standards are also recognized and used in many other
countries outside the United States. Prescription and over-the-counter
medicines available in the United States must, by federal law, meet USP's
public standards, where such standards exist. USP disseminates its standards to
pharmaceutical manufacturers, pharmacists, and other users through
publications, official USP Reference Standards materials, and courses. USP also
conducts verification programs for dietary supplement ingredients and products.
These programs involve independent testing and review to verify ingredient and
product integrity, purity, and potency for manufacturers who choose to
participate.
- http://www.nsf.org NSF International is a
not-for-profit, non-governmental organization, devoted to standards
development, product certification, education, and risk-management for public
health and safety that has been in existence over 60 years and provides
services for manufacturers in 80 countries. NSF provides third-party conformity
assessment services. NSF has
earned the Collaborating Center designation by the World Health Organization
(WHO) for Food and Water Safety and Indoor Environment.
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Identifying practitioners of non-conventional therapies
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Biological therapies
- Bastyr University Library Resources Using CAM MEDLINE provides user-friendly
gateway to medical subject hierarchy (MEsH) terms in Medline that facilitate
effective searches on the range of non-conventional biological therapies
including herbs and other natural products used as medicine, foods, aromatherapy
and many others.
- Office
of Dietary Supplements IBIDS Database (subscription fee) The International
Bibliographic Information on Dietary Supplements (IBIDS) Database is the
official website of the Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of
Health. The IBIDS database provides access to bibliographic citations and
abstracts from published, international, and scientific literature on the range
of dietary supplements. Users can search the full IBIDS Database, a subset of
Consumer Citations Only or Peer Reviewed Citations Only.
- Phytochemical
and Ethnobotanical Databases This site is the homepage of Dr. Jim Duke,
noted ethnobotanist, and the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. It is a valuable clinical resource that includes
links to many phytochemical and ethnobotanical, and nutritional databases, and
is intended primarily for researchers. The site includes an on-line dictionary
of ethnobotany.
- Phytotherapies.org
(free service for registered users) Although this site is the product of an
herbal company based in Australia, it is a valuable resource for herbal
practitioners and conventionally trained medical practitioners interested in
learning more about herbal medicine. The site is updated weekly and includes
editorial content, articles and an extensive searchable and hyperlinked herbal
database that includes monographs on current herbal therapeutics. On-line
enquiries can be submitted to experienced herbalists
- The Institute
for Functional Medicine (IFM) (subscription fee) The mission of the IFM is
to improve patient outcomes through prevention, early assessment, and
comprehensive management of complex, chronic disease through developing the
functional medicine knowledge base as a bridge between research and clinical
practice; teaching physicians and other healthcare providers the basic science
and clinical applications of functional medicine; and working with policy
makers, practitioners, educators, researchers, and the public to disseminate
the functional medicine knowledge base more widely.
- Herbal Medicine
Internet Resources The Alternative Medicine Homepage This is part of the
Alternative Medicine Homepage (see above), and is valuable gateway to the official
websites of numerous professional associations concerned with all aspects of
herbal medicine
- HerbMed This website
is an interactive, electronic herbal database and provides hyperlinked access
to the scientific data underlying the use of herbs for the range of medical and
mental health problems. It is an evidence-based information resource about
herbal medicines provided by the Alternative Medicine Foundation, Inc., a
non-profit organization. A limited free version of the database contains
information on 75 common herbs, and a fee-based professional version,
HerbMedPro™ uses hyperlinks to cross-reference an extensive bibliographic
collection on all aspects of herbal medicine. The databases are updated on a
regular basis. Subscribers can request searches on specific herbs or particular
clinical applications. The website is linked to numerous medical, scientific
and health-related web sites, including the National Library of Medicine,
MEDLINEPlus, and TEK*PAD, a project of the American Association for the Advancement
of Medicine, and the US Patent & Trademarks Office.
- Herb Research Foundation -
Herbs and Herbal Medicine for Health (subscription fee) This site includes
expert compilations on specific herbals that contain carefully selected
articles, studies, and/or discussions by experts that are available as
downloads or in print form. The work of the Herb Research Foundation is based
on its dedicated holdings of more than 300,000 scientific articles on thousands
of herbs.
- American Botanical Council - Herbal
Medicine (subscription fee) Established in 1988, the American Botanical
Council (ABC) is the leading independent, nonprofit, international member-based
organization providing education using science-based and traditional
information to promote the responsible use of herbal medicine. The site
includes databases on safety, use conditions for specific herbals, and
searchable monographs depending on the level of membership.
- NAPRALERT
Database Summary Sheet (subscription fee) The NAPRALERT File (NAtural
PRoducts ALERT) contains bibliographic and factual data on natural products,
including information on the pharmacology, biological activity, taxonomic
distribution, chemistry of plant, microbial, and animal (including marine)
extracts as well as ethnomedicine use records. In addition, the database
contains information on the chemistry and pharmacology of secondary metabolites
that are derived from natural sources and that have known structure. NAPRALERT
contains records from 1650 to the present however roughly half of the content comes
from systematic literature reviews from 1975 to the present. Napralert is a
valuable information research tool for practitioners interested in the history
and basic science of natural product-derived medicines.
- International
Journal of Aromatherapy This site is the home of The International
Journal of Aromatherapy, which covers the uses of
aromatherapy for mental, emotional or physical complaints. Subjects include the
use of natural, aromatic plant oils and essential oils to massage and touch
therapy.
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Somatic and mind-body approaches
- F E D E
R A T I O N _ M B S This is the website of the federation of massage, body
work and somatic practice organizations, a non-profit membership organizations
in the massage, bodywork and somatic practice field. The site is a gateway to
other websites of organizations related to different somatic approaches
including massage, rolfing, Feldenkrais, the Alexander technique and others.
- TRI Homepage
The Touch Research Institutes are
dedicated to studying the effects of touch therapy. The TRIs have researched
the effects of massage therapy at all stages of life, from newborns to senior
citizens. The site includes summaries of studies conducted through the TRI as
well as abstracts of studies on Tai Chi, yoga and acupuncture.
- Manual
Healing Internet Resources The Alternative Medicine Homepage This part of
the Alternative Medicine Homepage (see above) provides valuable links to
official websites of numerous professional associations concerned with a broad
range of somatic therapies
- Journal of Bodywork
& Movement Therapies The site provides access to the electronic version
of Journal of Bodywork and Movement
Therapies which covers therapeutic advances using bodywork including:
Alexander technique, chiropractic, cranial therapy, dance, Feldenkrais, massage
therapy, osteopathy, Shiatsu and Tuina massage, tai chi, qigong, and yoga.
- Mind Body
Control The Alternative Medicine Homepage This part of the Alternative
Medicine Homepage provides a valuable gateway to numerous websites pertaining
to the range of mind-body practices. Note that this site also includes links to
many websites on somatic approaches and therapies based on subtle energy.
- AMTA
Foundation | Research Database This is the website of the Massage Therapy
Foundation and the Massage Therapy
Research DatabaseSM. The mission of the Foundation is to chart an agenda for
research on health benefits of massage therapy. The initial version of the database
was compiled in 2000 and is updated quarterly. There are currently more than
4,700 citations of articles and books about massage therapy. A Citations are
reviewed by committee of massage therapists, physicians, and researchers. There
is no subscription fee and the Database is available only through the
Foundation's web site.
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Therapies based on forms of energy-information
validated by current Western science
- American Music Therapy
Association The mission of the American Music Therapy Association is to
advance public awareness of the benefits of music therapy and increase access to
quality music therapy services in a rapidly changing world.
- The Biofeedback
Network provides extensive links to societies and research groups that
study various applications of biofeedback
- Scientific Articles and Citations contains the
research library for Applied Neuroscience Inc and contains research articles on
clinical applications of QEEG and EEG biofeedback in mental healthcare.
- www.ambientintelligence.org/
This website is an excellent and comprehensive resource for research and
web-based tools for virtual reality therapy. The site provides summaries of books
and research papers on virtual reality-based therapy and includes links to the
leading research centers and provides free downloads of development tools and
programs to facilitate learning about clinical uses of virtual reality
technologies.
- VR Therapy - The
future of mental health treatment This site is an excellent resource for mental
health practitioners who are considering using VR exposure therapy. The aim of
the VR therapy Project is the promotion of information and use of Virtual
Reality over the Internet. The mission of the site developers is to develop a
accessible global knowledge base on emerging clinical applications of virtual
reality.
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Approaches based on forms of energy-information not
validated by current Western science
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Miscellaneous resources
- www.APACAM.org is the
dedicated website of the Caucus on Complementary,
Alternative and Integrative Approaches in Mental Health Care of the
American Psychiatric Association. There is no subscription fee but you must be a
psychiatrist to be a full member of the Caucus. The site is evolving rapidly
and includes on-line forums that are useful for networking with other
psychiatrists regarding a range of non-conventional treatments. The site
includes a library and links to related sites reviewed by Caucus members.
- The San Francisco Psychiatric Society (sfpsych.org)
advocates for the integration of the major models of psychiatry which have historically engendered polarization and conflict in the field. Based on the evidence, the society centers its mission on improving the clinical care of patients with mental illness through attention to three core principles in psychiatry: 1) psychoeducation 2) psychopharmacology and 3) psychotherapy. In support of this mission, the society sponsors broad-based educational events for Bay Area psychiatrists and, additionally, Psychiatry Events Monthly, an e-newsletter of psychiatry-related events taking place in the Bay Area emailed widely to interested health professionals and also available on SFpsych.org. A link on the home page, "Find A Psychiatrist," offers referrals to the society's members.
- The Institute for Healing
in Society and Medicine (IHSM) is dedicated to catalyzing the transformation of
medicine from "the inside out" by reconnecting individual healthcare
providers with the richness of their own inner lives, their authentic
professional mission, and with the sacred roots of medicine. An essential
premise of IHSM is that the future of medicine lies in the ground of being of those who create it. By promoting increased
awareness in the lives of healthcare providers, IHSM strives to restore the
primary focus of medicine in healing, enhance the quality of the doctor-patient
relationship, increase the delivery of effective, low cost preventative therapies
based on patient self care, and provide an impetus to adopt new educational and
research models for better healthcare delivery. IHSM conducts research on
patient care and healthcare provider education and uses findings to develop
educational, training, and retreat opportunities for healthcare providers.
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