Crisis Resources
www.211.org
2-1-1 is an easy to remember telephone number that, where available, connects people with important community services and volunteer opportunities.
www.alcoholics-anonymous.org
Alcoholics Anonymous® is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.
www.coping.org
The Center for Coping. The Center for Coping’s mission is to help you cope with the difficulties of everyday life: medical problems, stress, depression, anxiety, bereavement, family or relationship issues, and other problems.
www.instantlistener.com
InstantListener˙ is a web site community of anonymous people, from the USA, Canada and beyond. People from everywhere access the InstantListener Community as a resource to find other anonymous people to talk to. Fees.
www.nmha.org
The National Mental Health Association (NMHA) is the country’s oldest and largest nonprofit organization addressing all aspects of mental health and mental illness.
www.psychcentral.com
Psych Central provides reliable and professionally-reviewed resources.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline’s mission is to provide immediate assistance to individuals in suicidal crisis by connecting them to the nearest available suicide prevention and mental health service provider through a toll-free telephone number: 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
www.teen-moods.net
Teen Moods is a support community for teens with depression.
Using the Internet to Find Resources, Support Groups, and Other Help
No matter what crisis you, a friend, or a loved one are experiencing, you can be sure that many others have worked through, or are currently working through, the same issues.
To find groups or organizations dedicated to helping individuals work through specific crises, use Google or your favorite search engine. Finding the right search terms sometimes involves trial and error: if your search terms are too specific, you might get too few hits; if your search terms are too general, you might get too many.
Here are some general pointers:
- Start with a half-dozen specific search terms. If you get too few hits, begin deleting terms from your list or making the terms more general.
- Excellent crisis-related search terms to consider include the following: community, coping, group, health, help, information, network, people, program, provide, services, and support. Other useful terms are access, agency, anonymous, assistance, available, care, confidential, counseling, crisis, encourage, families, hotline, individuals, members, mission, organization, problem, recovery, resources, service, staff, treatment, and victims. Not all of these terms will apply to every situation, of course, so use whichever few seem relevant.
- If you’re looking for a precise phrase, put the entire phrase in quotes (for example, “flood relief”) to limit your hits to those web pages that include that specific phrase.
- The web pages returned by a search engine do not necessarily include all the search terms you listed. If you want a specific word or phrase to appear in all the hits, put a plus sign (+) before that search term.
- If you’re looking for a local organization, you include your area code among the search terms. If you can’t find a local organization, ask a national or regional organization for the nearest chapter.
