How Shrinkopedia builds content

Shrinkopedia is a mental health encyclopedia. It tries to explain symptoms, conditions, treatments, and the words psychiatry uses, in plain language, accurately, and without hype. This page explains how a Shrinkopedia entry actually gets made, so you can decide for yourself how much to trust it.

How we choose topics

We don't write about a topic because it gets a lot of searches. We write about it because people need to understand it.

Most people don't arrive looking for a diagnosis. They arrive with a feeling: a tight chest at night, thoughts that won't slow down, a strange flatness where caring used to be. So a lot of our topics start there, with what someone actually notices, and work toward what it might mean. We also cover the conditions clinicians recognize, the treatments people are offered, and the terms they run into in an appointment or a leaflet and walk away still unsure about.

How we research a page

Every entry is built from primary, authoritative sources, not from other websites. The main ones we draw on are:

• the DSM-5-TR (the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual) and the ICD-11
• clinical practice guidelines, including NICE
• the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
• systematic reviews, including Cochrane reviews
• peer-reviewed research

If a claim can't be traced back to a source like that, it doesn't go on the page. We try to say what the evidence shows, and to stop where the evidence stops.

How a page is written and reviewed

A writer researches the topic and drafts the entry in plain language. The job at that stage is clarity: explain the thing the way you'd explain it to a friend who's worried, without watering down what's actually true.

Then the draft is medically reviewed. The Shrinkopedia editorial team, led by Shariq Refai, MD, MBA, a board-certified psychiatrist, checks the entry for clinical accuracy before it's published. The reviewer can change claims, add nuance, or cut anything that oversimplifies. Nothing goes live until it has been through that check.

Every published entry carries a named review panel and four dates:

• Published. When the entry first went live.
• Medically reviewed. When a reviewer last checked it for clinical accuracy.
• Sources checked. When the sources behind it were last confirmed to be current.
• Last updated. When the page text was last changed.

The dates are there so you're never guessing how old the information is.

Evidence-strength ratings

Mental health research isn't all equally settled. Some things are well established. Some are genuinely uncertain. So every entry carries a rating that tells you which is which.

• Strong. The claim is backed by consistent, good-quality evidence, often multiple systematic reviews or clear guideline consensus. You can lean on it.
• Mixed. The evidence points in a direction but isn't consistent, or the studies disagree, or a topic is described clinically without a large body of research behind it. Worth knowing, worth holding loosely.
• Limited. There's little solid evidence either way. We'll still explain the topic, but we'll be clear that it isn't settled.

A rating of Mixed or Limited isn't a warning to ignore the page. It's just an honest label so you know how much weight a claim can carry.

What we know and what we don't know

Most Shrinkopedia entries have a section called "What we know and what we don't know." That section is a principle, not a formality.

Mental health rarely comes with tidy answers. A lot of common questions, like exactly how often a symptom occurs on its own, or why a particular pattern shows up in some people and not others, don't have clean answers yet. When that's the case, we say so. We would rather tell you a question is open than smooth it over with a confident-sounding sentence that isn't true.

How pages are kept current

Evidence changes. Guidelines get revised. New research lands. When that happens, the entry should change too.

Every page is dated, and pages are revisited when the evidence behind them moves. If we update an entry in a way that changes its meaning, the dates on the page change with it, and you can see when it last happened.

What Shrinkopedia is not

Shrinkopedia is for education. It is not a substitute for care.

It can't diagnose you. It doesn't know your history, your circumstances, or anything a clinician would need to know to actually help you. Reading an entry is a good way to understand a topic and to walk into an appointment better informed. It is not a replacement for that appointment.

If something here resonates with you, that's a reason to talk to a clinician, not a reason to skip one.

If you're in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or call 911.