Psych Central is an independent

mental health Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, influencing cognition, perception, and behavior. It likewise determines how an individual handles stress, interpersonal relationships, and decision-making. Mental health ...

information and news

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

. Psych Central is overseen by mental health professionals who create and oversee all the content published on the site. The site was created in 1995. The site was named as one of the Internet's 50 Best Websites in 2008 by ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'', and has approximately 6 million unique visitors per month.Psych Central
''

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

'' PsychCentral was acquired by

Healthline Healthline Media, Inc. is an American website and provider of health information headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1999, relaunched in 2006, and established as a standalone entity in January 2016. Accuracy There ar ...

in 2020. Former attorney and author, Faye McCray was appointe
Editor-In-Chief
in 2021.

Features

This

psychiatric Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry. Initial psy ...

website has over 250 support groups spread out over two communities: Psych Central Forums and a neurological support community, NeuroTalk. The combined membership of these two communities is over 550,000 members. Consumers are Psych Central's target audience but the site also includes a section for professionals.Target Mental Health Concerns for Psych Central Cyberink, ''Inside Health Media'', (November 23, 2011). Psych Central hosts two advice services on its website: * "Ask the Therapist" is a team of licensed, credential therapists who have responded to over 5,800 questions. * Similar to Medhelp.org, "Psych Central Answers" has allowed other users to answer another 8,400 questions. Psych Central has over 100 blogs that are written by

psychologists A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...

psychiatrists A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...

and people with lived experience, as well as a mental health news bureau that publishes up to five stories per day. One of the more prominent blogs is devoted to celebrity mental health issues. The site has a large collection of mental health and psychology articles that discuss the symptoms and treatments of mental illness, personality, parenting, relationships, and related topic areas.Benedict Care, Say 'Aaah'; Your Health Online; Before You Get On The Virtual Couch, ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'', (January 1, 2001). Other features include dozens of tests and screening measures, including an

Attention Deficit Disorder Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by excessive amounts of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that are pervasive, impairing in multiple contexts, and otherwise age-inap ...

(ADHD), mania and obsessive-compulsive disorder test and a

Narcissistic Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive interest in one's physical appearance or image and an excessive preoccupation with one's own needs, often at the expense of others. Narcissism exists on a co ...

Personality Quiz.

History

Psych Central was founded by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. in 1991. Grohol was a Florida psychology graduate student who began answering mental health questions in numerous mental health Usenet newsgroups, which he turned to after losing a friend to suicide. In 1995, Grohol began a weekly online mental health chat which continued on the Psych Central website. Grohol stated that one of the reasons he founded Psych Central was because he lost his childhood best friend to untreated depression.

Darrel Rowland Darrel is a given name. Notable people with the name include: * Darrel Akerfelds (1962–2012), American baseball pitcher and bullpen coach * Darrel Anholt (born 1962), Canadian ice hockey defenceman * Darrel Aschbacher (born 1935), American foot ...

and

Catherine Candisky Katherine, also spelled Catherine, and other variations are feminine names. They are popular in Christian countries because of their derivation from the name of one of the first Christian saints, Catherine of Alexandria. In the early Chris ...

mental-health system made a few improvements this year
(December 29, 2013)Alain Brunet, Andrea R. Ashbaugh, Christophe F. Herbert
Internet Use in the Aftermath of Trauma
Citing Grohol's own 1995 book, Page 17. Six citations in this book. In 2011, the journal ''

Pediatrics Pediatrics ( also spelled ''paediatrics'' or ''pædiatrics'') is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until th ...

'' was criticized by Psych Central for publishing a paper on "Facebook depression," which Psych Central called a "made-up term for a phenomenon that doesn't exist." In 2009, a study published in the ''

Journal of Neuroscience A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to: *Bullet journal, a method of personal organization *Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period *Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...

'' suggested that marijuana could potentially provide relief from the symptoms of PTSD. The research was reviewed by Psych Central.

Evaluation and criticism

The journal ''Health and Social Work'' ran an analysis on the quality of online health-related information regarding

schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...

WebMD WebMD is an American corporation known primarily as an online publisher of news and information pertaining to human health and well-being. The site includes information pertaining to drugs. It is one of the top healthcare websites. It was fou ...

scored the highest with a 91 percent endorsement. MedicineNet.com had an 89 percent endorsement rate, and Psych Central's section called "Schizophrenia and Psychosis" (http://psychcentral.com/disorders) had an 88 percent endorsement rate. The journal concluded that all sites examined offered quality information on schizophrenia. The journal ''Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking'' ran an analysis on the quality of online mental health-related information across the 11 most commonly-searched for mental disorders. The researchers found that search engines "regularly returned Web sites that were of good or better quality health information." Psych Central was cited as one of the top two mental health-focused Web sites returning search results for this analysis.Grohol, John; Slimowicz, Joseph; Granda, Rebecca, The quality of mental health information commonly searched for on the Internet; Study, ''Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking'', (April, 2014), Pg. 219. In 2001, the ''

'' cautioned that Psych Central "...is as much a vehicle for self-promotion as it is a consumer guide. roholadvertises his book...He spends less energy doing evaluations of outside resources."

References

External links

*{{Official website American medical websites Mental health organizations in the United States Mass media companies established in 1995 1995 establishments in the United States Companies based in Newburyport, Massachusetts