My apologies to non-Australian residents for this post. Findatherapist.com.au provides both a professional web-presence for healthcare practitioners (Psychologists included) and a gateway for consumers to find professionals in their area.

For therapists, findatherapist provides a relatively cheap online profile (cost from $150 to $300 depending on features). What are the benefits of an online profile I hear you ask? Well, according to findatherapist:

A profile page on Find a Therapist promotes your services, details your skills and experience, and allows you to provide testimonials and create a:

• Full description of your services with a graphic and a logo
• Outline your qualifications and registrations
• Clinic information: times, locations, rates
• Links to your website
• No restrictions on your modalities or locations
• 4000 character keyword search feature
• Phone Referral Service
• 24 hour access to update your profile at no cost
• Site statistics: see how many people view your page
• Email forwarding (non viewable address) for appointments
• Online booking service (Virtual receptionist) through innerv8

Dig a bit further into the site and you will find opportunities to customize your page, include additional advertising and contribute articles to a regular newsletter. All in all, you can really go to town on your advertising.

If you are wondering what a profile page looks like, well I am two-steps ahead of you. (Alex - I hope you dont mind me using your profile - extra publicity?)

For consumers, the site is basically a search engine, allowing you to find therapists (of multiple disciplines) in your area and learn a bit more about them before making contact. You can search by discipline, technique and location. There is also a phone enquiry line available.
My thoughts:

• slick-looking website, nicely set out with easy navigation (although I am not a huge fan of searches that require the page to re-load in the middle of a search).
• If you can’t be bothered setting up your own site, this is a great alternative, and reasonably priced. Sites like this provide the additional benefit of taking care of the promotion and search engine placement for you, which are not much fun as a website owner.
• You can purchase friends a “gift voucher”. Choose carefully though because I would take receiving a voucher to see a drug and alcohol therapist quite personally
• I really hope they have plans to expand the profiles into internet counselling. We need a good service like that in Australia. I really look forward to see where they will take this service in the future.
• Depending on the cost, it would be a good move to customize your page to get it to really stand out from the crowd as you are sharing the stage with multiple disciplines and therapists.