Seratis

Please note: this section works as a dynamic interactive interface. Sounds complicated, but in reality all it means is that it has a little eye candy. Click on a subject header (the blue titles) to see more information on that subject.

The Articles section is a fusion of two basic features, namely a blog and a pychological trivia section. The blog is an informal news service for this site, whilst the trivia posts provide psychological titbits, interesting developments and news concerning the subject concerned. Articles can be subscribed to via RSS and can be commented on by any user.

We are pleased to provide a free open forum for our guests, where you can seek advice, help others and generally talk about, well, anything!

The forum software that we use is called Vanilla. It has a rather novel layout, but one that is easy to understand. It's quite minimalistic, yet has features that more complex forums lack. A particularly feature is whispering - your reply to a post can be made to be invisible to anyone but the member you choose to whisper to.

To post in the forums, you will need to register as a user of the site. It's free, fast and painless and is primarily in place to combat trolls (unwelcome visitors).

Seratis.net is a new approach to accessible psychiatry. Unlike other sources, Seratis combines accurate, statistical yet understandable information with the basic facts you need to know. It is our aim to be able to provide you with what you need to know as well as what you would like to know.

There are a great many mental health conditions out there and it is nigh on impossible to cover them all on this site. Nevertheless, we do try to be as detailed about the subject as we can. The A to Z site map lists every condition and treatment covered on this site and should therefore take you to the information in question fairly quickly. If you fancy saving time, you could try the search facility out which is kindly powered by Google.

The amount of medication covered in this site is fairly daunting, even to more seasoned users. To make things easier, there is an A to Z site map that lists all medications covered by brand names and by generic or extinct names (amongst other things). Alternatively, you could use the search facility which is kindly powered by Google.

Our goal is to bridge the gap between detailed information and accessibility. Typically, the two are not generally seen together; one source may be very easy to read yet will lack more detailed information, whilst another may be awash with technical data that is hard to understand. We aim to produce a hybrid of the two.

Whilst every step is taken to ensure that figures and descriptions are reliable, mistakes are sadly an inevitability. Nothing on this site should be taken as an absolute truth and if you're interested in any of it, we encourage you to double check any information. Dosages are particularly tricky to get right, even with the best tools, so a rating system is provided. Verified data has been checked with the BNF 52 edition, Not Verified data has information sourced from other sources and Highly Questionable data is sourced from a single, non checkable source.

Whilst typical symptoms are provided for conditions on this site, we do discourage self diagnosis. If you are worried, we encourage you to see a professional.

As well as the description provided (as much as is possible) per medication, we also list some basic ststistics.

The chemical formula is largely a curio item and tends not to be all that useful to most people, including myself.

The half life on the other hand is quite interesting. Effectively, the half life in this case is the time taken for half of a particular drug to be eliminated from your body. The longer the half life, the longer the medication will stay in your body. The figure can also provide a hint as to how fast acting the medication is - usually, the shorter the half life, the sooner the drug kicks into action.

Unit doses is a tricky figure to come up with and is intended to give one a rough guide as to how much of drug x is equal to how much of drug y, a useful figure should one need to switch from one drug in a particular family to another. Note that these figures only apply in the drug family in which they are quoted.

Finally, dosage. A typical figure is given which is meant to reflect the usual dosage administered to patients, whilst the maximum outpatient dose is intended to indicate where the dosage starts to get serious. Neither are solid, super accurate figures and the preferred dosage can change depending upon your practitioner.

Whilst this site may provide curious hints as to possible treatments, we do not encourage cherry-picking treatments. Your health practitioner knows better than we do. If, however, you are particularly interested in a particular medication, there's no harm in asking them about it.