So you think you or someone you love may suffer from an anxiety disorder or mood disorder. Now what? There is hope for you! You have many options:

• See your primary care doctor to make sure you are physically healthy and to ask for a referral for mental health care.
• If your employer (or spouse's employer) has an Employee Assistance Plan, call them.
• Ask your church. They may be able to refer you to someone who can help.
• If you have health insurance, call them or visit their website for covered behavioral health specialists.
• If none of the above will work, try Googling for community mental health services in your area. There are many groups offering help at reduced-cost and sliding-scale fees.
• If the person who is suffering is someone close to you, above all be there for them, and understand that their behavior is a symptom of a disease. Just as a person with muscular dystrophy has trouble walking, a person with, for example, depression has trouble doing even the simplest tasks, reaching out to others (though they may be desperately lonely), fulfilling their obligations, even getting out of bed (depression is also a sleep disorder).
  

• PsychCentral, one of the best mental health websites on the web
• Blueprint for Hope, a website for people with depression
• Patients Like Me, an online community with areas for mood and anxiety disorders; also has online tools like mood logs, medication logs, etc.
• Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated, by David Burns
• An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, by Kay Redfield Jamison, about her experience with bipolar disorder (the title is an understatement)
• Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness, by Daniel Amen; this book takes a brain-based approach but contains natural and alternative remedies as well