Another year is almost over, as we’re closing the book on our 12th year on the web (and 15th year of providing mental health resources online). It’s a perfect time to look at the year in review to see where we’ve been and where we’re headed in 2008.

2007 has, quite frankly, been Psych Central’s best year ever. Our traffic is up, people call us every week interested in the free services we offer, and we watch as our community grows at a break-neck pace. We launched the beta of our general mental health screening, the Sanity Score, which was picked up as a story in the New York Times’ new health blog in October. We’ve settled into a production rhythm that provides dozens of new articles each week for our news channel, our popular blog, the Ask the Therapists feature, and our general mental health library.

We continue to do all of this with a focus on our readers’ interests and needs. We believe a dedication to helping you with living your life with a mental health issue, above all else, comes out in everything we do and write. For instance, we launched Psych Central Answers in response to users’ requests to get more immediate feedback on a mental health question or life concern of theirs. And we’re beginning publication of the Psych Central News Brief, our first print publication, because people asked us for more real-world professionally-produced content they could take with them or share with their friends, family, colleagues or clients.

We continue to be proud of the fact that 99% of our traffic is organic, meaning people find us through their friends, family, colleagues and search engines. We built Psych Central from the ground up, one page at a time, to serve you and your mental health needs. And from your feedback, we seem to be doing a pretty good job at it. Thank you.

But we’re not sitting on our laurels! For 2008, we have even more service enhancements planned for our growing online communities (both the forums at Psych Central and our neurological support community, NeuroTalk), as well as for our general website. We plan on launching our nonprofit in 2008 that focuses on helping members of our communities with small, one-time grants (which we’ve been doing informally for years, but will now formalize).

We continue to be amazed and grateful for the responses we receive when people find our site, as over 20,000 people do each and every day. People write us to tell us how much they appreciate our objective information — telling it like it is in mental health in plain, everyday language. We’re thankful for the dedication of our small, independent staff of editors, writers, and volunteers.

We couldn’t do this without you and your continued support! Thank you, and please, if you ever have any feedback you’d like to provide us, do so in the comments to this entry or by writing us privately.

Take care and from everyone here at Psych Central, here’s wishing you a very peaceful and happy New Year.

Dr. John Grohol is the founder & CEO of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

Like this author?
Catch up on other posts by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. (or subscribe to their feed).

Comments

This post currently has 2 comments.
You can read the comments or leave your own thoughts.

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 29 Dec 2007
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.