Search by Keyword Help

• Just the Information You Want
• How to Do a Simple Search
• Search Results, How to Read Them
• General Searching Rules
• Advanced Search
• Using Phrases

Searching the Internet for targeted mental health topics can be quite a challenge. Large search engines are generalized, requiring the user to search through thousands of pages of text to find just the right information. The MHDNA Search Engine is Mental Health specific. We have already researched hundreds of mental health sites and have included only the best - the most interesting, the most comprehensive, and the most useful - in the Search Engine database. So now you can retrieve mental health articles faster and with a finer level of detail. Also, while major search engines may be full of old data, we will be regularly checking all our sites to assure that links are current.

Click in the search box, and type your keyword(s) that identify your topic.

For example, typing "parity" will return to you a list of links to all sites containing the word parity. Searches produce a list of links to web pages that contain the keywords or phases that you enter. Remember to use descriptive words for more accurate searches. For example: a search for "phobias" will return much more specific result than a search for "anxiety".

After you have executed a search, you will see a list of results.

The first line tells you the title of the article. The information is blue bold letters and is an active link.

The next group of text is the keyword centered excerpt, which shows you the keyword highlighted and in the context of the online article. For multiple keyword searches, only the first word is highlighted.

• The MHDNA Search Engine searches only those sites that have been entered in the Search Database.
• All searches are case insensitive, so you can type your query in upper or lower case. For example: "President Clinton" is the same as "president CLINTon.".
• Capitalization is ignored. Therefore proper nouns and names may be entered in any manner.
• Exception words are ignored, for English, this includes "a", "an", "and", "as" and other common words.
• Words with less than 3 characters are ignored. For example: "we", "12", "by", "oh" and "bi" are ignored, but "Jim", "747", "Feb" and "bar" are used in searches.
• Plurals and simple derivation of words are treated as the root word. For example searches on "stone", "stones" and "stoned" will all produce the same results. If you are searching for an exact word and do not want any root, plural or derivative, simply place it between quotes ("); it will be considered like a phrase and exact results will be returned.
• Punctuation marks such as the period (.), colon (:), semicolon (;), and comma (,) are ignored during a search.
• To use specially-treated characters (&, |, ^, #, (, ), @, $) in a query, enclose your query in quotes (").
• Wildcard searches are not supported. For example: "jack*" will not return "jackass", "jackrabbit", "jackson" etc.

You may use as many keywords as necessary. Keywords should be separated by a space. While using multiple keywords will narrow your search, using too many keywords will slow your search and may result in your missing a few good articles.

Multiple keywords are treated inclusively, that is they are regarded as a Boolean "AND" operator. It is not necessary to use the plus sign (+) or the work "AND" between keywords.

If you search for "homeless" and "adolescent", the MHDNA Search Engine will return results that contain both words. Query results are sorted by the predominance and the proximity of the keywords. The first results will usually contain more of the keywords and/or feature them in the title.

Phrases or search strings are distinguished from multiple keyword searches by enclosing a group of words in double quotes, ("). Example: "Case Management", "Attention Deficit Disorder."