First time here? - A quick website orientation

By: Tom Cloyd - 2 min. read; reviewed: 2023-04-07:1701 Pacific Time (USA))

Contents of this page…

YOU - IF…

  • You want to understand better mental distresses involving psychological trauma and dissociation, as well as the major mental disorders often associated with them, such as addictions, depression, and sleep disorders.
  • You want to learn what you can do about these mental distresses, on your own, working with compassionate friends, or working with skilled professionals.
  • You want to learn how to make your strengths even stronger, your adaptive skills more flexible and successful, or just how to make ordinary life simply work better.
  • You want to understand better:
    • how we can come to know much of anything at all about the complex nature and dynamics of our brain and mind;
    • how we can use what we learn to benefit ourselves and others; and
    • how we can intelligently evaluate the many claims made in public discussions about how best to manage our minds.

We intend this site to be appropriate both for non-professionals and professionals interested in mental illness and mental health.

We also intend it to be appropriate both for those with diagnosed or diagnosable mental disorders and for the much larger group of individuals who are troubled from time to time with mental distress not grave enough to qualify them for professional help. We surely count ourselves in all these groups, as practically no one gets through life without personally experiencing mental illness, just as no one escapes physical illness. Both are a common part of human life.

We work to increase public access to mental health information that is TRUSTWORTHY and USEFUL, both for those seeking recovery from mental illness and those who want to increase and even optimize health they already have.

You can expect an active, ongoing effort to accomplish our primary goal, expressed above.

You can expect a strong attempt to achieve credibility in what we offer, by making clear the reasons for our assertions. We will refer at times to careful arguments in favor of certain strategies and tactics, and will seek always to stand on a foundation of the best research currently available, PLUS an honest evaluation of the quality of this research.

Frankly, that’s a lot to attempt, and is surely more than is either attempted or achieved on too many other websites discussing mental illness and mental health issues. There’s a good reason why they don’t do this: it’s serious work, and it requires training and substantial experience to winnow the good grain from the chaff, so to speak. It’s far easier just to write casually and hope that a pretty picture beside the text will induce belief. That’s not our game here at all.

Furthermore, because our process is overtly incremental, we will at times put up partially complete articles, and articles where the sources are not yet explicitly stated. We’ll do this to invite participation in article development and improvement. We’re necessarily a work in progress, both personally and on this website.

If you want more information about something - what do you do? ^

This is easy: contact us! We love hearing from site visitors.

If you have a comment, some thoughts, or a suggestion to share - how do you do this? ^

Once again, just contact us. Know that, with your permission, if your contact results in some substantive site change or addition, we want to give credit. Of necessity, this is a group effort, and you can very easily become a part of the group!

PLEASE read next: About the Get Trauma Information (GeTI) project - Why we do it, and why you may want to join with us

 

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