The Internet is rife with well-intentioned mental health advice, supposed resources, and many, many pitfalls. Much of the difficulty is the reality of psychiatry, in that the lack of objective evidence regarding psychiatric illness (save treatment responses and, in some cases, neuroimaging data) means that there are great opportunities for anyone to become an “expert” in mental health purely by talking about it a lot.

For that reason, I generally warn against blind searching, as it is surprising the number of purported mental health resources are actually run from an antiscience agenda. Here are some which I have found trustworthy:

NSW Mental Health Access Line

1800 011 511

This single number covers access to all public mental health services for all ages in all areas of New South Wales. Covering drug and alcohol, aged care, child and adolescent, adult, it is a single point of access for any person requesting support from mental health, whether they be clinicians, patients or concerned individuals.

BeyondBlue

An incredible government initiative that is arguably most responsible for the incredible shift in national attitudes to mental health. Filled with factsheets, resource links and contact information, it is a prime source of support.

CRAZY MEDS

This is an interesting one. Whenever I look for information on medication, I go to resources like MIMS and CIAP, which are resources closed to the public and only available to clinicians, but after looking at those, I visit this site, which is filled with medication information but not a doctor in sight. The remarkable nature of this is that it is filled almost entirely with patient personal experiences but is nevertheless responsible with the information that it provides, and I happily admit that it has taught me more than a few things over the years. If you want a brutally honest account of what to expect from your medication, together with some tough questions to ask your psychiatrist, this is definitely the site I recommend to consider.