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Editorial Guidelines

Last updated

Mental Advocate publishes general information about mental health, relationships and addiction recovery. These are the standards we hold that content to, written so you can check whether we are meeting them.

Clinical integrity and sourcing

Briefs are built from primary sources: peer-reviewed research, diagnostic terminology as defined in the DSM-5-TR and ICD-11, and published guidance from SAMHSA, the American Psychological Association, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the American Society of Addiction Medicine and the World Health Organization.

  • Every brief carries a Sources section listing real, publicly checkable references, and the count shown on each card is the actual number of sources in that brief.
  • Where a claim rests on a single study, the brief says so rather than presenting it as settled.
  • Where evidence is mixed or contested, the brief says that too. We would rather be less quotable than misleading.
  • We do not publish invented statistics, and we do not present a number without a source it can be traced to.

Review board protocol

Every clinical brief passes two checks before publication:

  1. Editorial review — verifying that each factual claim traces to a listed source, that no source is misrepresented, and that caveats are adequate.
  2. Subject-matter review — checking that the brief represents current evidence fairly and does not overstate what the research supports.

Review confirms the accuracy of information. It is not a clinical opinion about any reader, and it does not make any brief a substitute for care. Where a brief describes symptoms, it does so to help a reader decide whether to seek an assessment — never so they can conclude they have already had one.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, we want to fix it. Email editors@mentaladvocate.org with the page and the specific claim. Substantive corrections are made to the page and reflected in its updated date; we do not quietly delete content to make an error disappear.

How we make money, and what we will not do

Mental Advocate is advertising-funded and free to read. Some modules display sponsored or third-party results, and we may be compensated when you interact with them. Those modules are labelled.

Because addiction treatment in particular has a documented history of patient brokering, we state our limits explicitly:

  • We do not accept payment in exchange for directing any individual to any specific treatment provider.
  • We do not operate a call centre, and we do not sell or pass on the contact details of people seeking care.
  • We do not receive compensation based on whether anyone enrols in, or is admitted to, a programme.
  • Compensation does not buy editorial coverage, a mention in a brief, or a more favourable write-up. No advertiser reviews our content before publication.
  • Directory listings are not endorsements and are not verification of a licence or accreditation.

For anyone seeking treatment, the free, non-commercial starting points are SAMHSA's National Helpline on 1-800-662-4357, FindTreatment.gov, and the NIAAA Alcohol Treatment Navigator, which states that it has no commercial sponsors. We link to those deliberately, including from pages that also carry sponsored results.

What we are not

We are not a healthcare provider, an insurer, a treatment facility, a government agency, or a referral service acting on any provider's behalf. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by any government programme.