Mental health professional may be surprised to discover how much is happening online today

in the healthcare field. Working closely with dozens of online discussions with hundred of others, I believe I have a pretty good idea of what's going on and what is in store for us professionals and leading online mental health issues of interest.

For the most part, behavioral healthcare professionals continue to use the online world like most people do—to exchange information and communicate with one another. This hasn't changed all that much since I got on the Internet in 1991 and isn't likely to change much in upcoming years. What will change are the exact mechanisms and technologies used to access online services.

Right now, online communities and discussion forums remain by far the most popular areas for professional to enjoy. Behavior. OnLine, you know so well, is one of the leaders in this area and continues to be a shining example of how to build a solid, high-quality professional community online. In the upcoming months, Behavior. OnLine will be improving its discussion forum interface, adding regular real-time hat events, and implementing another quality-enhancing features which will greatly add to your experience as a member.

Mailing lists remain popular with professionals online as well, usually because of their increased privacy and stability. For instance, one of the mailing lists I host, Psychology of the Internet: Research & Theory, continues to enjoy ongoing discussions about research and theory into online behavior. Some of more recent topics include the Larry Froistad case and validity of Internet addition disorder, Hundreds of other professional mailing lists also exist, on topics. If you haven't ever tried subscribing to one of these e-mail based forums, I highly recommend trying one out. Not only are they good for the collegial chat, but they can also help you keep up to speed with new treatments, theories news, and current issues in the field.

Another way to stay current is to take continuing education courses. While we're used to taking such courses in person, the idea of taking them online is still new and intriguing education courses. While a variety of such continuing education offering are now available, most are nothing more than asking you to great deal of text online, follow a few links, and then answer some general questions about what you've just read. Not exactly cutting-edge stuff there. In fact, home courses and audiotapes have been available for years and allow you to do just.

To make the most of online technologies, we took a different task. Behavior. OnLine has teamed up with Mental Health Net, the site I oversee, to offer audioPsych. This innovative educational offering allows you to listen to a speaker present on various behavioral healthcare topics, raging from cognitive therapy for the treatment of personality disorders to psychopharmacology in depression and sleep disorders. At the same time as you're listening to the audio transmitted to your computer through the Internet, slides automatically appear on your computer screen just as if you were in the room with presenter, taking the course live! A number of distinguished faculty are included in audioPsych's course offerings, including C. Keith Conners, Ph.D., Peter Salovey, Ph.D., Theodore Million, Ph.D., D. Sc., Michael D. Yapko, Ph.D., James Pretzer, Ph.D., and Barbara Fleming, Ph.D., among others.

This kind of technology is not for the faint-of-heart, though. It is recommended you have a 28.8 K or better Internet connection, do not connect to the Internet through a commercial service such as America OnLine or Compuserve (because their Internet connections are too crowed for this kind of application), and have at least a Pentium PC or Power PC Mac. You can try it out for free, though, as every course has an associated 15— 20 minutes' demonstration. So if you're looking for

A．Internet accessibility.

B．Therapeutic treatment.

C．Communities and discussion.

D．Behavioral healthcare profession.