The quality and accessibility of Australian depression sites on the World Wide Web.
To provide information about Australian depression sites and the quality of their content; to identify possible indicators of the quality of site content; and determine the accessibility of Australian depression web sites.



Cross-sectional survey of 15 Australian depression web sites.



(i) Quality of treatment content (concordance of site information with evidence-based guidelines, number of evidence-based treatments recommended, discussion of other relevant issues, subjective rating of treatment content); (ii) potential quality indicators (conformity with DISCERN criteria, citation of scientific evidence); (iii) accessibility (search engine rank).



Mean content quality scores were not high and site accessibility was poor. There was a consistent association between the quality-of-content measures and the DISCERN and scientific accountability scores. Search engine rank was not associated with content quality.



The quality of information about depression on Australian websites could be improved. DISCERN may be a useful indicator of website quality, as may scientific accountability. The sites that received the highest quality-of-content ratings were beyondblue, BluePages, CRUfAD and InfraPsych.
Griffiths
Kathleen M
KM
Centre for Mental Health Research, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200. kathy.griffiths@anu.edu.au
Christensen
Helen
H
D001315:Australia; D003863:Depression; D003866:Depressive Disorder; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006801:Humans; D007255:Information Services; D020407:Internet; D011786:Quality Control