Notes on Internet Case Studies

The original article "Case Studies of the Internet: Experiences at an Anxiety Disorders Program" was published in 1998 in the journal MD. Computing. As with any article about the Internet, the information it contains has, in part, been rapidly outdated. This is especially true of the links in Table 1 (websites pertaining to Anxiety Disorders). Even as the article was published, one of the links (to the OCD foundation) was dead. The table is presented as it appeared at publication, but as of the writing of this webpage, the majority of the links are now dead, including:

On the other hand, there are now many more resources available. The National Institutes of Mental Health now provides more extensive information at http://www.nimh.nih.gov/anxiety/anxietymenu.cfm. A web search using a search engine will produce hundreds of thousands of results for terms like "panic disorder" or "obsessive compulsive disorder."

The concerns in the article about the amount of information and the validity of information on the Internet are not out of date and still face clinicians. All information is biased, whether for commercial reasons or personal reasons. (Compare websites like http://www.paxil.com versus http://www.quitpaxil.org). I believe that it is important for clinicians to be able to help their patients develop principles for making decisions. Part of the role of the psychiatrist is to help patients understand the psychiatric perspective and how it pertains to their personal understanding of themselves. For many, this understanding is more and more affected by the Internet.