BluePages

The BluePages Depression Information Website is a comprehensive online source of information about depression compiled by the Centre. It provides information about the symptoms of depression and how it is diagnosed, summarises which medical, psychological and alternative treatments work for depression (and which don’t) and contains an extensive list of people, organisations, books, websites, and other resources that may be helpful to people who are depressed.

Users can complete online depression and anxiety quizzes (to see how their depressive and anxiety symptoms compare with others) and BluePages incorporates a specialised search engine which allows users to search over a large number of Australian and international depression sites.

BlueMood

The usefulness of BluePages has been examined as part of a randomised controlled trial of 525 people from the community with high levels of depressive symptoms. Participants were randomly allocated to receive either BluePages, MoodGYM or a Control intervention.

Compared with the Control group, people receiving BluePages showed greater improvement in (i) mood (ii) knowledge about depression (iii) attitudes/stigma.

These results have been published in the following:

Christensen, H., Griffiths, KM and Jorm, AF. (2004) Delivering depression interventions using the Internet: positive results from a large randomised controlled trial. British Medical Journal. Online 23-01-04.

Griffiths, K., Christensen, H., Jorm, AF., Evans, K., Groves, C. (2004) Effect of web-based depression literacy and cognitive-behavioural therapy interventions on stigmatising attitudes to depression. British Journal of Psychiatry. 185, 342-349.

BlueBoard

"bb is great and my only support…i need it regularly as it keeps me in check and motivated…probably because i can talk about things 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Its like a help line for me and the people on here are amazing, caring, loving souls." BlueBoard Member. August 28, 2004

Many people seek support and information from online virtual support groups. However, little is known about the use or usefulness of such virtual communities. The Depression & Anxiety Consumer Research Unit has now established BlueBoard, an online support community, on the BluePages site.

Established in March 2004, BlueBoard is an asynchronous online bulletin board on which users can share their experiences of depression or anxiety disorders, or caring for someone with depression or anxiety.

Focussed Search

BluePages was developed in collaboration with the Enterprise Search team of the ICT Centre at CSIRO. It incorporates a focussed search engine which enables users to search over a range of international and national depression sites. Recent joint research with CSIRO has revealed that a focussed search may locate higher quality pages than are located using general search engines.

Thanh T, Craswell N, Hawking D, Griffiths K & Christensen H. (in press). Quality and Relevance of Domain-specific Search: A Case Study in Mental Health. Journal of Information Retrieval.

Initial inquiries about the BluePages projects may be directed to: Kathy.Griffiths@anu.edu.au

 

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